Photo by Evan Krause on Unsplash
It was January of the year 2000, during the winter break from a year teaching English in China, I spent a month in Thailand. I arrived in Bangkok with a hacking cough, the worst cold I’d ever had in my 24 years of life. But the sun, and the positive vibes proved healing. I started to unwind from the tension and the struggle of day to day life in the People’s Republic of China.
Bangkok, and specifically Khao San Road, Bangkok’s backpacker HQ, and the surrounding streets felt like some slightly chaotic version of heaven. People spoke English. There were travel agents selling cheap tours around Thailand. Cafes and restaurants serving food to suit every global taste (or at least those of the main nationalities who trod the backpacker trail in SE Asia) and more Western faces in one place than I’d seen in 6-months. The soundtrack to The Beach was playing in all the restaurants and bars, as though it was offering a promise adventure and excitement.
As I browsed the many, many streetside stalls selling cheap clothes, tourist trinkets and local handicrafts I could hear vendors and backpackers alike using the phrase “same same but different.” They were talking about their wares, or making an attempt to haggle cheaper prices since the stall next door had the same things.
My inner language geek perked up and pocketed the phrase away. It was curious and strange, it didn’t quite make sense but was somehow familiar and understandable at the same time.
I heard this phrase again recently here in Singapore. And while it means similar, the phrase has so much more meaning than a simple translation to standard English can offer. The InterWebs was unable to offer the origin of the phrase. It’s common to hear it in several parts of South East Asia. Perhaps it’s a direct translation from Thai, or even Vietnamese. If you’re curious to know more feel free to consult the google.
So why, have I adopted this phrase for my Substack? Good question, glad you asked! There’s something about it which explains how I navigate life and make meaning from my many diverse life experiences. It’s slightly awkward, but also creative and it can only come out of the mixing of languages and culture.
Same same but different could be talking about so many things. People, places and cultural narratives grow and evolve and change and yet somehow they remain the same. If we look through a wide lens at history or global cultures it’s all same same but different.
There’s also something about the apparent contradiction of something being the same, but different that perhaps can help us navigate this world we live in. If we focus on the ways we’re all the same as humans, underneath it all, we can miss the glorious diversity and specificity. But when we focus only on difference it can be isolating or divisive.
Allow me to try and explain more. It seems to me there are those who believe we’re basically all the same. Humans everywhere want the same things, we assume that everyone shares our values and that’s what best for us is best for everyone else.
Sometimes this is a well-meaning attempt to focus on what unites us. Sometimes it’s born of the ignorance that comes from living in social and cultural bubbles where the majority of people we interact with are just like us. In the latter context, it’s often the case that alternative voices are suppressed or ignored because they don’t fit the dominant narrative.
There are also those who focus on how we’re different. When our lens is one of difference we assume that our way of being in the world is unique to us and are surprised when other people are more similar that we think. This can lead to exceptionalism or to feelings of being excluded or an outsider.
Again this recognition of difference may have positive intent. It helps us to recognize individuality and cultural specificity. But if this results in rejection of the “other” because we feel threatened or fear those differences then that can be dangerous. Difference becomes a judgment rather than lens to help us understand one another better and allow space for all our realities and all our stories.
It’s my belief that we need to find the space where we can allow for similarity and difference. We need to do this both on a personal level in our interactions with friends, family and community. We also need to learn to get unattached from cultural stories about sameness or difference. There can be a lot of shame, judgment, criticism and rejection tied up in the ways we see ourselves as the same or different to others.
Same same but different is also a reminder that it is often in apparent contradictions that we are able to get closer to the truth in our own lives and the wider world. When we’re stuck in rigid - black and white, all or nothing - beliefs which don’t allow space for the opposite to also be true or have meaning, those things are usually not the truth of a situation.
Both/ and is more helpful than either/ or. For a long time I struggled to make sense of that year in China. Was it a good year or a terrible experience? Traveling in Thailand was easy to catagorise as fun and light and easy. I loved it. I didn’t know how I felt about China.
It was years later before I was able to understand that my need to decide if the experience was good or bad, was blocking me from finding meaning in that year. It was so hard on many levels, and yet I gained tremendous self-belief and resilience from the experience. There was a lot I loved about China and the culture, but I hated it too.
It took me a long time to realise, that was the whole point! Nothing and no one is all good or all bad. “Good” people are capable of doing bad things. “Bad’ people are kind of their mums and kittens - to lean on a cliche. Exaclty!
And so, that’s why I’ve renamed my Substack. Thank you for reading.