“Good manners are just a way of showing other people that we have respect for them.”
I find myself at present quite well-mannered, but that wasn’t always the case. The stigma around manners and culture has been deep rooted. In our society people seem to believe that diversity and mixed origin are the reason we have different manners. I am not fully agreed on that and let me explain why.
Manners are something you learn from young age and you believe they come from your family, friends, surrounding community. I call lack of manners from culture “bad habits”. Let me tell you about few of examples of “bad habits” of Poles and our Newry neighbours.
Also let me show you the similarities, because I am always saying “We all bleed the same colour”, and ‘manners’ are basically inside of us all . Our problem lies in their application in the right time and place. I couldn’t understand when I came here, why local men for example don’t hold their partners hand while walking. You can ask my wife, I was doing this constantly until we got married. I really lost my Polish identity on this one.
We Poles are very romantic with our partners such as holding hands or even a kiss outside. Also, we Polish greet people by shaking their hand. I remember doing this on many occasions, and locals were a little bit confused by what I was doing. During the period of my 15 years journey in Northern Ireland I have never ever seen Irish greeting themselves by hand shake gesture.
In fact a hand shake gesture is the most significant and important element of good manners and show of respect. Just look in to politics or the business world, always at the start or at end of any meeting people shake hands. I have to admit we Polish are absolutely better at this habit. As good as we are at greeting with a hand shake, we struggle with our “straight talk” and loud tone of voice. What I mean by this is if you were invited to a Polish family’s home for dinner, you probably would have been asked uncomfortable questions. For example, where you work? How much are you paid? And lastly, is your income big or small?
Imagine if you were over 30 years old and single, you would have been told that more or less something is wrong with you. ”The straight talk” has loads of minuses but there are also a few plus points because at least we won’t mislead you. One big thing we have in common is “judgemental syndrome”.
Without knowing the person, we assume things about them like who they are or what they are really like. Our judgement is based on their culture, origin, background or even religion. In Northern Ireland it is very common anyway due to community divisions. I suppose you can’t really expect Northern Irish people to judge others in the right way, when their identities are in such a mess in their communities. We Polish living abroad are not the innocent either on this matter. I will cover more on this in my next blog.
To be continued….
I hope you enjoyed this blog. If you have any ideas which you would like me to address in my blog please contact Jim the editor of downnews.co.uk or send me an email to: danielg2003@tlen.pl or dangebski@yahoo.com
Thank you!
