Sunglasses

After I finished my run today, I took my Oakley sunglasses and automatically put them upside down on my running hat.

A few minutes later I realized this.

Why did I put them upside down on my hat? It doesn’t make any (actual) sense.

I live in Germany and if you look around in whole Europe, you won’t find many people wearing their sunglasses upside down on their hats.

It’s an American thing.

I use to play baseball and I adopted this behaviour from the behaviour of my idols I watched on US Television.

Some Americans even wear their sunglasses at the back of their heads. For whatsoever reason.

Okay so why does this matter?

I think it’s a great way to demonstrate the uniqueness of cultures and sub-cultures and sub-sub-sub-sub-cultures.

Every culture, as small as it might be, has some uniqueness. And whatever we do, whether it’s doing business or simply want to talk to interesting people, we need to understand and respect this.

Seth Godin framed it this way:

“People like us do things like this.”

I think this is beautiful.

If you think about this, it’s all about empathy. But I know it’s hard to be empathic at some times. At least I struggle with it.

Sometimes idiots are just idiots. I’m sorry.