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Hey friends,
I hope you've had a lovely weekend.
Here are your actionable tactics, routines, and habits for a rich, happy, and healthy life.
Please enjoy our latest edition of the Elixir.
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Judging People And Bad Manners
I got angry with my girlfriend
For a strange reason…
Eating before everyone else.
We had spent hours preparing the food.
The table was nearly ready.
People were still waiting.
And she started eating.
How rude, I thought.
Manners matter to me.
They were drummed into me from a young age.
Open doors. Say please and thank you.
Look people in the eye. Shake hands firmly.
Always give your best.
So when my girlfriend ate first,
It triggered me.
And because it happened more than once, I started wondering why she simply did not know better.
Then came the invitation:
“Come to India. Meet my parents.”
So, in January, I booked a flight to Delhi and travelled to her hometown.
The moment I arrived, her mother wrapped me in the warmest hug.
Her father smiled.
“Come. Eat.”
I sat at the table with her dad, brother and sister-in-law while her mother disappeared into the kitchen.
Then the food arrived.
My plate came first.
It was hot from the stove, and she wanted me, the guest, to eat immediately.
Before anyone else.
While they all waited, I ate.
When I finished, another dish appeared.
“This is for you.”
Again, they watched as I ate first.
And suddenly, I understood.
I smiled.
And slapped my head against my face.
Back in England, eating before everyone else could be seen as rude.
In her family, asking the guest to eat first was an act of love.
The behaviour was the same.
The meaning was completely different.
That moment made me wonder how often we misread and interpret things.
We judge people's actions using different maps.
Different families teach different meanings.
Silence can mean peace to one person and punishment to another.
Advice can feel like devotion to one person and criticism to another.
Giving space can mean respect.
Or abandonment.
Asking questions can feel like intimacy.
Or intrusion.
One person says, “I love you,” by talking through every feeling.
Another says it by fixing the broken shelf, making the tea or filling your plate before their own.
Neither is necessarily more loving.
They are simply speaking from different emotional worlds.
We often accuse people of failing to care when, in reality, they are caring in a form we have not yet learned to recognise.
Perhaps this is why love requires more than chemistry.
It requires curiosity.
It asks us to become students of one another.
To say:
“When you do that, what does it mean to you?”
“This is what it means to me.”
“This is how I learned to show love.”
“This is how I learned to receive it.”
I had judged my girlfriend by the rules of the world that raised me.
She was not being rude.
She was repeating a gesture of love she had learned long before she met me.
And now, whenever I find myself rushing to judge someone, I remember that table in India.
Sometimes the problem is not that love is absent.
It is that love has arrived in a language we do not yet understand.
But love does not speak one language.
Sometimes it says, “I saved you the best piece.”
Sometimes it says, “Text me when you get home.”
Sometimes it says nothing at all and quietly fills your plate before its own.
And sometimes, what looks like bad manners is simply love wearing the clothes of another culture.
Before deciding that someone does not care, pause.
Ask what their actions mean in the world they came from.
Because the deepest relationships are not built by finding someone who loves exactly as we do.
They are built by learning how to recognise love when it arrives in an unfamiliar form.
Have a great week ahead
Kia Kaha & Love
Chris Xx
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