Our assumptions are not always necessarily right because we are human beings and we can misjudge a phenomenon in our way. I assumed that western people are not friendly at all. There were many reasons behind my thoughts. Firstly, I heard a lot of things about them and most of them negatively impacted my mind. Inverse attitude towards western culture was the main reason behind my assumption. Additionally, I am always highly influenced by the teachers and some of my university teachers said that they were very rude and unfriendly, especially to Asian people. They again said many unfavorable things against their culture and lifestyle which forced me to jump to the worst conclusion as well. Lastly, the mass media of Bangladesh showed various things about western culture and society in the worst way.
These were the main reasons behind my outlook about British people in the past. Before 2017, I tried to judge everything in absolute terms and I failed again and again to recognize the actual fact before that period of time. A man could be good or bad in absolute terms from my point of view. If someone was considered as good by me, he was perfect in all perspectives. However, I realized that the philosophy was wrong. As no one is perfect in all the areas, absolute judgement about a person is very controversial. After 2017, if anyone asked me about someone's behavior or performance, I asked a counter question. The question was “in which sector do you ask for?”. Because it is impossible for me to provide an overall judgement about someone. That philosophy inspired me to re-evaluate my assumptions about life, people, culture and religion. I was a hardliner about my philosophy in the past but gradually I realized my mistakes, rethought my philosophy, explored new ideas and reshaped my philosophy. As a result, I did not have any extreme thinking about any phenomenon including western people after 2018.
Now back to today, when I arrived in the UK, I gradually felt that they were very friendly and helpful in most cases. They at least try to help others which is missing from people of my nation. They are very tolerant in almost all sectors. That's because we are immigrants and they accept us without showing any discrimination. In my country, we face challenges with the issue of Rohingya refugees and people don't like to accept them at all & hate them due to the financial crisis in many cases. In contrast, we, the people of Bangladesh, always try to show Muslim brotherhood in our daily life. Hence, it is a contradictory scenario and people of Bangladesh including me are hypocrites. The same thing happens in the western countries as well, they never boycott us (immigrants) socially. Moreover, I remained disappointed by the fact that asking questions was considered a sin in many cases in Bangladesh. Many people may disagree with me but it is true somehow. British culture always promotes asking questions and providing feedback in all matters which are necessary to improve ourselves and to explore new areas. Another great aspect is that British people like to do outdoor activities. Almost everyday, I see children play many types of games, hang out with others, do cycling and many more activities. It is a common scenario that all the members of the family go cycling or fishing on the weekend whereas the younger generation of Bangladesh mostly focus on online and spend most of their time chatting with others. Most of the parents provide mobile phones to their children at a very early age and they don't consider the negative sides of it. Thus, the younger generation is always busy with their phones, avoiding outdoor activities, and family hangouts on the weekend is missing from our culture. The western culture always accepts other cultures and values in their society. People come to the western countries with their traditional outfits and no one has any objection to it which shows their greatness. In the same street, we can see someone wearing a short dress and someone wearing a traditional long dress. In fact, watching church, Mosque and Hindu temple in nearby places is very common in the UK. Anyone follows his or her religious rituals without any disruption which is the beauty of the western world.
Today, I went out to accomplish some personal work and I saw some fruit trees in the garden of a British man. I took a couple of pictures of it and watched it curiously. Then a British man came out from the house and started giving me information about the fruit. The name of the fruit was quince. He also added information about another nut tree. I was just amazed to see the friendly behavior of the man.
The moral part of the story is that it is impossible to judge a society in absolute terms and every society has more or less positive and negative things.
