Have just spent a few days down in the south of France at a place called Gassin which is near St Tropez and the beautiful Port Grimaud. I often get the reaction from people that France is nice but it is full of French people! Fortunately I not only love France but I love French people. I think they have a wonderful outlook on life that has, down the generations, shaped who they are as a nation. I am proud to be English but with many other patriots I lament the way England seems to be in self destruct mode at the moment. One option to make ourselves feel better is to foster a mindset that says "well at least we aren't French"! This is a sad mindset based on spectacularly flawed caricatures of the French. The worn out stereotype of the rude onion eating, garlic smelling, effeminate fop should have been consigned to the cross cultural waste bin long ago yet sadly still finds favour among those who value ignorance as a life guide.Sometimes it is, however, genuinely difficult for our Anglo Saxon spirit to understand and engage with our Gallic neighbours. There seems to be a very real disconnect somewhere. At which point it seems expedient to simply enjoy their cheese, wines, and fabulous flans (in the words of Blackadder!) and pretend that the people don't actually exist!
Happily there are always options. Unlike us the French are not Anglo Saxon. They are a romance race as are the Spanish. The fact that they look Anglo Saxon doesn't mean they are any more Anglo Saxon than an inhabitant of downtown Beijing. We don't expect a native from Beijing to be Anglo Saxon because they don't share our physical features. They look different and therefore we treat them differently. The French look like us and so we expect them to be like us. This wrong expectation permeates other areas of life and is at the root of many disagreements and communication breakdowns.
I have taken time to understand the French culture and it's people. I have learned that they look like me but that is where all similarities end. Once I engage them from this kind of platform I make good progress in relating to them because I learn about, acknowledge and celebrate their differences. Before I know it I am instinctively toasting my wonderful French hosts with a hearty vive la France!!!
