Why Some Societies Step In and Others Hold Back
I was in a hospital corridor in Ankara with my father when a man walking past stopped to comment on my test results.
Not a glance. Not a sympathetic expression. He actually entered the conversation, told us what he thought it meant, and moved on. Thirty seconds, maybe. Then gone.
And here’s the thing, I wasn’t even that surprised. Which is its own kind of data point.
I’ve been thinking about that moment a lot since coming back to the Netherlands. Not because it was so shocking, but because of what it put into focus.
Because here, I run into the opposite problem.
Not people stepping in too quickly but people stepping back even when I’m trying to open the door. With neighbours. With people I’ve known for years. Sometimes with family. I’ll share something personal, something I’m clearly making available, and I’ll feel a kind of careful retreat. A hesitation. Like the boundary is still standing even after I’ve tried to lower it myself.
Two different problems. Two different kinds of lonely.
In Turkey, life doesn’t always get to stay private.
People comment. They warn you. They advise. They involve themselves in things that, elsewhere, would be left alone out of basic politeness. There’s an unspoken assumption that what happens in front of others is, at least a little bit, available to them.
This is maddening in a very specific way. You can feel observed without being seen. Responded to without being heard. Concern and control arrive together and it’s not always obvious which one you’re dealing with.
But; and this is the part I keep coming back to the same habit also produces a kind of social immediacy that I genuinely miss sometimes. Life feels less partitioned. Other people are present. They notice. They enter the frame. The problem isn’t distance. The problem is usually too little of it.
In the Netherlands, especially in the north, the whole thing runs in the other direction.
Nobody’s going to insert themselves into your medical results in a hospital corridor. Nobody’s leaning into your business because it happens to be happening nearby. There’s a real dignity in that. I’ve appreciated it more times than I can count.
But over time I’ve also felt its cost.
Sometimes I don’t want restraint. Sometimes I want someone to come a little closer and I’ve already indicated that they can. And instead I get a response that is respectful, measured, and somehow still distancing. Not cold. Not unkind. Just careful in a way that leaves everything exactly where it was.
In Turkey, people may cross the line before you’re ready.
Here, the line can stay standing even when you’re not defending it.
I’ve tried to decide which of these is worse and I genuinely can’t.
One can suffocate you. The other leaves you oddly untouched. What reads as warmth in one place reads as intrusion in another. What counts as respect in one culture feels, from outside it, like emotional caution that’s been mistaken for a personality.
What I seem to want unfairly, I know is a custom culture. Stronger boundaries when I haven’t invited anyone in. Softer ones when I have.
That’s not how cultures work. They don’t come adjusted to individual preference. They come with their own internal logic, their own reflexes, their own answer to the question of how much of a person’s life is supposed to belong to other people.
In Turkey, the answer often seems to be: more than you’d expect.
In the Netherlands, it’s often: less than you’d hope.
Living between those two answers has taught me one thing fairly clearly.
A lot of what we call culture, the warmth of a place, the coldness, the openness, the reserve is really just a shared agreement about where the line goes. About who’s allowed to step toward you and when. About who has to make the first move, and how unmistakable that move needs to be before anyone acts on it.
In Ankara, that agreement produced a man who felt completely entitled to comment on my test results in a public corridor.
Here, it produces something quieter: people who stay considerate even when consideration isn’t quite what I need.
Both can feel wrong.
Both, once you understand where they come from, make complete sense.