Since being in college and moving away from Madison, I’ve met several people that seem “different.” I quickly learned the way people were raised has a big effect on how “different” or similar they are to me. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but it is a learning curve when you’ve moved into a new area after being used to the small, country town that you came from. I enjoy meeting people with different upbringings so that I can get a new perspective on things, but it helps to find your people, those that were raised in the same way as you, because it reminds you of home. In some cases, such as in the workforce, finding like-minded people who were brought up in a smaller town (and had less money) helps to keep me sane in a world where others may be trained to think that hard work is not a priority. I’m sure that a lot of you feel the same.
But let’s not knock those who may have been raised with a different mindset than us small-towners. There is something that we can learn from everybody and vice versa. Showing someone what it means to work hard instead of getting angry that they don’t have the same experience in that area can be the stepping stone to someone else’s self-growth journey. You never know the lives you may change simply by keeping an open mind and sticking to your roots. Remember that the next time you run into someone that seems “different.”