The Cultural Shock Caused By Cultural Conflict

Each individual in their background faces cultural conflict or struggle. It happens when two distinct societies, qualities, conventions or practices of various individuals faces one another and have an alternate arrangement of sentiments and so on. Cultural conflict is a serious ordinary phenomenon and it can happen to anyone. However, it can (and do bring really) a great deal of inconveniences with it like lost hunger, sorrow, restlessness, and other possible health hazards. However, there are certain ways that we can adapt to avoid cultural conflict or maybe reduce its effect on us.

I additionally have been a casualty of cultural conflict somewhat. I come from Pakistan which is a country in South Asia with a population of nearly 220 million. Our way of life is dynamic and open. Individuals in our nation are for the most extrovert and like to mingle with other people regardless of different culture or backgrounds. In 2018, when I chose to think about abroad, I picked Finland as my study destination.

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I had gone through several pages reading about systems and cultures in Finland and find it according to myself as I myself am quite an introvert type of person. When I arrived in Finland, my initial introduction was simply wonderful. I was very astonished of the infrastructure. Yet, following couple of days, I began to feel that cultural shocks. knew that beforehand that people in Finland are not very open like Pakistan, but by having a physical experience with Finns, I came to know that they are actually too much introvert.

I am a self observer individual somewhat, e.g I do not engage with strangers and people other than my friend circle, but here I noticed that even the Finn friends were not ready to engage with the friends. Above all else, It sets aside a great deal of effort to make companions here. I’d say that Finns are too shy to talk to strangers at once. But in exceptional cases, if they know you quite well and you have a strong bond, then it’s a different story. But it took me quite a while to make a Finnish friend here. That’s just the one thing.

When I used the public transport for the first time, I was quite shocked that nobody is sitting next to me even if there is space and instead they prefer to stand in the bus. But I realized that it was not me, but they even don’t sit next to each other. They want to have their own space. This thing really shocked me that how different Finnish culture is from mine. One of the possible reason that Finns are like this could be the extreme cold weather for a long time. They get fed up with this extreme weather and then they just don’t feel to talk with anyone and prefer to live in their own individual word. But again, this is just my personal opinion.

I was living in Helsinki. I had not many companions here of my own nation because of the way that I was not an extrovert like typical Pakistanis are. I couldn't make any Finnish companion for a long time. However, the friends that I made, were from different cultures and backgrounds. All of them were from different countries and I had no contact with any of the Finn.

That was the time when I really started to think about solving this issue. I figured out the root cause for this problem. And after digging deeper in this problem I came to know that it was the lack of Finnish language skill. Since I couldn’t speak a word of it, I could never integrate into the society. I started to learn the language and I realized it very soon that some of my Finnish classmate started to become more open to me and started talking to me and going out etc. Just because, I was showing them that I can speak some words of Finnish and I am trying to ‘act-like-a-Finn’.

Concludingly, I’d say that my cultural shock wasn’t quite bad at first, after living in Finland for a while now, I think it’s just a change process that I had to go through to learn a new culture and it does happen to everyone mostly.