I’m finishing up my week’s work in the US by spending an extra day with friends who have just emigrated for work for a couple of years. And our conversation turned to the differences between the US and the UK: two countries separated by a common language.

The family had a ‘cultural awareness’ training day last Saturday, covering history, economics, culture and language. Having spent an inordinate amount of time here over the past 4 1/2 years I can appreciate a great deal of the challenges. But I haven’t had to do the day-to-day things – shopping for food when all the brands and a lot of the descriptions are different (did you know that chick peas are called garbanzo beans in the US?); trying to order a coffee and frustrating the waitress when I don’t have the answers to all the choices I then receive; learning what a decimeter means.

All in all though, there are having a good time, with the children settling in particularly well to school (the amount of homework here vastly exceeds the UK norm, which is a good thing).

However, perhaps I’ll stick to being British, and finish with a quote that one of the children used in a presentation at school today, in which she told her classmates about Winston Churchill: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else!”

Yesterday I competed in what might be the toughest race I’ve ever done: Tough Guy. Having completed it once before in 2003, I thought I knew pretty much what to expect. However, with the temperature at -2, and divers breaking up the ice (min 1 cm think) on the water obstacles before we started, I began to realise this was another level of challenge.

But, rather than remembering the pain (and there was lots, including that most excruciating headache after being submerged 4 times in quick succession underwater) I’m pondering what on earth made me do it?

My MiL (Mother-in-law: known to regular readers of this blog as someone who provokes me to think and ponder on issues I’d otherwise probably be a bit blase about) mentioned a couple of times in passing on Saturday that we must have something to prove to someone. At the time I grinned and said “Probably”, but the more I think about it, the more I wonder whether that is indeed the case. Is it now that I’m mid-thirties I need to prove to myself that I’m still fit enough to compete with the youngsters (ahem… 20 something)? Or do I need to prove to my friends and colleagues that I’m fit, healthy and ‘hard’ enough to do it? Either way, it suggests that I find value in either what I, or friends and colleagues, think of me in terms of my masculinity and ‘tough’ness.

That’s it really. No major conclusion on the rights and wrongs of that, but simply a pondering on the nature of self-worth.