Do you blame water?

I love traveling to different countries.  One of my favorite things to do is sit on a park bench or sit in an outdoor cafe and watch people go through their day to day lives, see how they interact with each other, overhear snippets of conversations I can't understand, but get the gist based on tone and body language. Watch people go through their day to day lives.

I especially enjoy watching young children run and play, simply being present and enjoying the moment. They are laughing and saying things to their friends but it also really frustrates me that they are speaking Spanish or Portuguese or some other language I don’t understand and I think to myself “how rude”. They should be speaking English so that I can understand what they are saying. Don’t they know my enjoyment would be better if I could understand them?

Now this is ridiculous, for me to expect a child growing up in Spain or Portugal to speak in English instead of their native tongue because it would be better for me. 

How would this child know English? They have grown up hearing Spanish since the day they were born. They are immersed in a Spanish culture, everything they have ever known is Spanish but I want them to be a different way, a way that suits my background and expectations.

It is like this for everything, isn’t it?

That child didn’t make a conscious decision to learn and speak Spanish. They need to ask for food, communicate with their parents, interact with their world and the way to do that is with these sounds called Spanish.

But at a fundamental level, this is how we learn all of our habits and interacting skills with the world. 

We create a stimulus and generate a response. 

I yell this happens, I cry this happens. I say this and that happens.  I am nice and that happens, I am mean and this happens.

We learn everything kind of like we learn language as a child. We try things and we either get a positive response or a negative response. We build an ever increasing body of knowledge like we get more and more proficient with language. 

You would never punish a four or five year old child for having learned to speak their native tongue but not be able to speak in a language they haven’t heard or barely used before.

You have to remember that it is the same with people’s actions. Through their life experiences and interactions with the world they have learned that interacting in this way gets them to the outcome they desire; whether it is viewed as acting positively or negatively doesn’t matter.  It only matters that they have learned that these particular actions lead to this result. To expect anyone to act differently is like expecting a child to speak a different language. 

Now,  you may say this is extreme, adults should know better, they should know right and wrong and good ways to do things. 

Sure, but the reality is that the previous life experiences have taught them that acting in this manner leads to the desired result. 

Do you blame water for taking the shape of the vessel it has been poured into?