I've always been fascinated by the variety of shades, flavors and sounds that make up our human race.  I love to travel, and over the years I've visited different countries in search of experiencing life from the perspective of a foreigner.  During my travels, I've had the great fortune of meeting interesting people and have made a few international friends along the way.  I have fond memories of drinking red wine and enjoying deep conversation/heated debates with my new "international" friends about culture, politics, radical social movements and everything else in between.  I thoroughly enjoy friendly arguing about important social issues and it seems as if an unspoken vow has been made between me and a few international friends -- we agree to disagree for the sake of our interesting friendship.  We are able to do this because we all agree that perspective is everything and one can’t truly understand the perspective of another if they haven’t shared the same experience.

In my opinion, the world of social media has confirmed what many around the globe believe about Americans.  Collectively, we are ethnocentric and in most cases American anxiety is very different than the anxiety faced by countless millions around the world.

From the perspective of a foreigner, America is indeed a vast land of opportunity.  On the flip side, I’ve also been told that America – the West Coast in particular -- is also full of narcissistic spoiled brats who have little concept of what it means to suffer day in/day out due to lack of access to basic life necessities.

I do see where foreigners are coming from when observing Americans who take every day luxuries for granted.  Generally speaking, Americans waste water, drive gas guzzling SUVs, and there’s a Starbucks waiting for us on practically every street corner in most major cities.  Just last week when I was in San Francisco, I overheard a  young man complaining out loud about the taste of certain bottled water while he was gliding past me in the organic food isle frantically typing on his iPhone.  He was just going on and on about the fact the store didn’t have his favorite brand of water.  I thought to myself…OMG, what if this idiot is ranting on social media about his favorite bottled water being out of stock?  Yuck.

Last Fall while I was visiting friends in Tucson, I recall a particularly heated conversation about Americans and their obsession with using social media as a platform to brag about themselves or create hysteria about unimportant things.  I think the video below featuring a game show parody about silly Twitter trends perfectly ties in with a foreign friend’s rant about American perspective when it comes to anxiety.