Anat Eshed

Thaipusam in Singapore and the discipline of cultural humility I walked out of my hotel in Little India thinking I knew what the morning would be: spice-scented air, bright shopfronts, scooters threading through traffic, and my mind already sprinting toward the workday. Instead, I stepped into something that stopped time. A stream of barefoot devotees moved slowly and purposefully down the street. Some carried towering kavadis adorned with peacock feathers, flowers, and bells. Others carried...

How Japan Taught Me Cultural Humility: The Multiplier Skill We Can’t Afford to Ignore Before traveling to Japan, I read a travel article written by a woman who had recently visited. She complained about almost everything: the rules, the lack of trash cans, the food, the etiquette, the systems, and the social expectations. By the end, I had the strange feeling that she had traveled very far only to discover that Japan was not home. And that, I think, is one of the great missed opportunities of...

What The Word Is Murder by Anthony Horowitz can teach us about assumption-checking One of the quickest ways to get yourself into trouble—at work, at home, anywhere—is to confuse a good story with the true story. We do it constantly. Something odd happens. Someone says less than expected. A detail does not fit. And almost immediately, the mind gets to work building a narrative that makes the situation feel coherent enough to understand. That is useful—until it is wrong. That is one of the...