After being in France for a week, I headed to Ireland for a family wedding and the difference between these two cultures was glaring. I wouldn’t say one was better than the other, just very different, and so I learned a few more lessons leapfrogging from one country to the other.

The French love to live their beautiful life. They are all about the pleasures of eating, drinking, and enjoying each others company. The generalization is true, they aren’t all the friendliest, but some are ever so friendly! They work to live, not the other way around. The Irish, on the other hand, are chatty Cathy’s! They have a story to tell and it’s usually hilarious. One must navigate the brogue a bit, but once you do, the stories are priceless. The cafe in France becomes the pub in Ireland. And the music is joyful, as it calls for you to sing along or, at the very least, clap along! The Irish also work to live.

The lesson I learned from simply people-watching was that France and Ireland enjoy their downtime fully! No one was in a hurry in either of these countries—sometimes annoyingly so (that was my ‘harried American’ coming out)! I learned that everything doesn’t have to be a race to the finish and slower is so much more enjoyable once I embraced it (I fought it a bit in the beginning, but then realized I was on the losing end of that battle). We don’t have to rush and push our way through life. There’s an alternative and it’s arguably so much better.

Let’s GO….slowly! WE GOT THIS!
Beth Fitzgerald