My husband always sends me funny videos, and during this World Cup they have mostly been of people visiting the United States for the tournament. Watching people from different parts of the world experience America for the first time has been unexpectedly delightful. I have always thought there is something beautiful about people from different backgrounds coming together.
When I found myself smiling at the social media videos people were sharing, I thought it was because they were funny at first. Europeans are amazed by Walmart, walking through it as though it were an attraction of its own. One person couldn’t believe how large the candy bars were. Someone wondered why American pickup trucks looked so… angry. Another laughed that the GPS told them to stay on the same road for hundreds of miles.
The comment sections and reaction videos have become almost as entertaining as the videos themselves.
Americans are asking, “Do Europeans have anything over there?”
Europeans are asking why everything in America is so big. Some are trying Chick-fil-A for the first time. Others are amazed by sunsets, local diners, or simply the kindness of strangers.
But after watching more of them, I realized they were making me smile for a different reason. I wonder if familiarity quietly takes away our sense of wonder. Maybe we stop noticing certain things simply because they have become part of our everyday lives. Then someone arrives from somewhere else and reminds us that what is ordinary to us may be extraordinary to someone else.
How many ordinary things have I stopped seeing simply because they have become ordinary to me?
Years ago, when I lived in England, people loved making jokes about British food, they still do. But that wasn’t my experience.
I remember looking forward to Fridays because we would have fish fingers and chips. Beans on toast never felt unusual to me. I had grown up eating something similar long before I ever arrived in England. On weekends, my aunt would often treat us to kebabs. And looking back now, one of the things I have come to appreciate most is how many different cultures were represented through food. Indian, Turkish, Caribbean, African… it was all there.
Looking back, I don’t remember thinking, “This country is strange.” I remember adjusting and simply accepting that this was how life was lived there. Maybe that is why these World Cup videos have resonated with me.
They remind me that every place has an ordinary life uniquely its own: the grocery store, the local restaurant, the roads people drive every day, the food children grow up eating.
The things residents hardly notice anymore become someone else’s first memory. There is something beautiful about that.
It makes me wonder how many gifts surround me every day that I have stopped noticing simply because they have become familiar. Perhaps wonder does not always come from seeing something new. Sometimes it comes from seeing something old with borrowed eyes.
