I vomited in a ferry today, That should have felt embarrassing, right? uncontrolled smelly projectiles coming from your mouth while you feel like dying? And you are making everyone around you uncomfortable? You should just kill yourself with shame.
Except I wasn’t. And the reason I wasn’t was that I was not the only one vomiting. Around 100 more people were vomiting in the ferry. Yes, the sea was rough, yes it was fun for first 10 minutes. No, we did not run out of vomiting bags.
The first person to vomit in the ferry, was visibly embarrassed, but the dominos fell quickly there after. After a point, when someone vomited, everyone smiled with that “welcome to the club pal” Smile. It was crazy, it was smelly and it was great. And I was amazed how quickly the act of vomiting was devoid of it’s “embarrassment quotient”
Just another reminder that most of the things we judge people on, our values, our beliefs are basically shaped by our environment. Even simple things like wearing shorts in public, smoking, eating meat can make you point of judgement in one society and become almost a requirement to enter another one. What I learnt today is that it can take less than a few mins for the society to change from one to other. You just need a travel on a fairly rocky sea.