I criticised Berlin’s airport. A reply said that Germans do not make mistakes. That the airport works for other people. That we are too small to teach or criticise them.
Too small.
That is the part worth looking at.
You can disagree with my airport criticism. Ask for evidence. Tell me where I am wrong. That is a conversation we can have.
But what does being Albanian have to do with whether a question is worth asking?
At that point, we have left the airport behind. We are talking about how much permission we give ourselves to think, to question, to have a voice.
I respect people who know more than me. There is a lot to learn from them. But learning from someone does not require putting yourself beneath them.
If my argument is wrong, correct the argument. If yours is better, show me why.
We can do that without making one nationality incapable of mistakes and another incapable of asking questions.
This is what I was getting at when I spoke about feeling less valuable than others. The moment you decide somebody else must be right because of who they are, you make yourself smaller before the conversation even starts.
Be willing to learn. Be willing to be wrong.
But stop asking for permission to think.
