reverse culture shock
It's strange to be home, but for different reasons than i might have thought. My trip has been relatively short. Many travelers abroad travel for 6 months, or a year. My trip was 6 weeks. This shortness lent it an interesting aspect: It was long enough to learn a new world, but not long enough to forget the old. When i returned home after what seemed like a long trip, i expected things to look very different to me, but to the contrary, things looked EXACTLY THE SAME. It was a bit surreal. It felt like i had left this world and gone to another for a length of time, and then zapped back into this world the day after i left.
Of course, i was gifted with the relative sight that only such an opposite cultural experience can give. I see things more starkly, the straightness of buildings, and the strangeness of our culture.
On the drive home from boston to my hometown, i was struck by the number of cop-cars that i saw. So many, darkly waiting in the median for someone to harass, or lights flashing by the side of the road, a victim in clutches. It's no wonder everbody drives on their side of the yellow line! In Nepal, traffic patterns are creative, friendly and practical. Here we're governed by rules and lines, tickets and fines. The same exists over there, but the lines aren't straight, and neither are the fines. Traffic violations are taken care of on the spot, the 100 rupee fine gracing the pocket of the fining officer. No tickets in triplicate, guilty or not guilty, no repeated visits to the courthouse. Too many rules and regulations. With Nepali traffic rules, there is no one right way; everybody is responsible for themselves, and for not unreasonably endangering their brother. And it works. mostly.
Another thing in america governed by straight lines: the buildings. Everything so straight and orderly, plumb and parallel. And entirely incongruous with the surrounding natural environment. In the Himalayas, houses were built from readily available material: rock. In the mountains, that's the element of choice. Imported material is not practical. It's hard to carry 2 tons of factory made brick up a winding mountain trail, so just pick up the rocks from the ground, and build with them. It just makes sense. Not so in america. Everything is from someplace else, brought in on trucks, and assembled into sanitary square boxes that have nothing to do with the ground around them.
Same thing with the food we eat. Nothing to do with the ground around us. Its hard to get a wholesome thing to eat in a developed country such as our own. I thought that the gastro-intestinal adaptation to Nepali food would be a challenge for my system, but in fact the reverse has been true. My stomach is challenged by the reintroduction of preservatives and whitebread and the crazy variation of an american diet, and since i got back i haven't had a normal bowel movement. Corn grown in Nebraska and processed in Pennsylvania, packaged in New Jersey, and shipped in a truck to a warehouse in Maine, delivered to the grocery store down the street. Who knows what my body will do with that? On the other hand, rice grown by my neighbor and potatoes from my back yard, that's a little more manageable. Nothing about our lives here has anything to do with ground around us. This is the distinct advantage that a developing country has, head and shoulders above us. They live close to the ground around them, their food and their water and their houses and their primary mode of transport, all straight from the ground. Where does ours come from? Who knows?
I don't understand how some of these things came about. Why we have developed the way we have is a mystery. The life in a developing country is easy to understand: things have come about through necessity, through the real needs of humanity. In our "developed" country, though, necessity is lost, and things develop through convenience. Necessity is the mother of invention, but convenience is its in-bred cousin. Living by necessity, one must live in harmony with one's surroundings, because it is the only way to survive. On the other hand, when necessity is cast aside, and convenience becomes the driving factor, things become a twisted mess of fad and fashion, decadence and desire, totally disconnected from the true needs of people, and the true needs of people are forgotten, and no longer met. This is a lamentable state to be in. Although we may be the richest country in the world in some respects, in other aspects, we are the poorest.
I spoke to my miith-juu, my soul-friend in Nepal, about the richness of his country. I told him that everybody in Nepal seemed so happy, smiling all the time. He said "If you look inside of us, though, you will see a sadness, a deep grief." I said, "In the same way, you look at us in America, and it looks to you a rich life, but on the inside, we are a poor people, lacking in our true needs, the needs of our spirit. On the other hand, people in Nepal look poor on the outside, while on the inside you are rich, in brotherhood, and love, in the true needs of spirit." Human beings, to be truly happy, must first attend to these true needs that we have all but forgotten in our striving for convenience and our forgetfulness of necessity.
A bit of perspective is all we need. To see our decadent lives in relation to the lives of these bare survivors helps, but it is not enough. We must throw away our superiority, our desire to bring them "UP" to our level, and we must learn from them what they have to teach. I have never had to think for a day in my life where my food is coming from, the effect of the sun and the rains on my crop. This is an impoverished way of nourishment. I have chosen instead to put my knees in the dirt and learn these things. I do not live the hard life of the mountain people, nor can i pretend that i ever have, carrying my 20-pound backpack up past the porter laboring under his 220-pound load. But i have learned from these things, learning to appreciate the real stuff of life, how to nourish the deepest seed of life, and how to feed the human soul. I wish that everyone would step back and take a look at their life from the outside, to see the way that we live for what it is, to live another way for at least a day, in order to gain a wider perspective of how to truly live. Whatever you do, give it a try.
most sincerely,
mark andrew heffernan
Of course, i was gifted with the relative sight that only such an opposite cultural experience can give. I see things more starkly, the straightness of buildings, and the strangeness of our culture.
On the drive home from boston to my hometown, i was struck by the number of cop-cars that i saw. So many, darkly waiting in the median for someone to harass, or lights flashing by the side of the road, a victim in clutches. It's no wonder everbody drives on their side of the yellow line! In Nepal, traffic patterns are creative, friendly and practical. Here we're governed by rules and lines, tickets and fines. The same exists over there, but the lines aren't straight, and neither are the fines. Traffic violations are taken care of on the spot, the 100 rupee fine gracing the pocket of the fining officer. No tickets in triplicate, guilty or not guilty, no repeated visits to the courthouse. Too many rules and regulations. With Nepali traffic rules, there is no one right way; everybody is responsible for themselves, and for not unreasonably endangering their brother. And it works. mostly.
Another thing in america governed by straight lines: the buildings. Everything so straight and orderly, plumb and parallel. And entirely incongruous with the surrounding natural environment. In the Himalayas, houses were built from readily available material: rock. In the mountains, that's the element of choice. Imported material is not practical. It's hard to carry 2 tons of factory made brick up a winding mountain trail, so just pick up the rocks from the ground, and build with them. It just makes sense. Not so in america. Everything is from someplace else, brought in on trucks, and assembled into sanitary square boxes that have nothing to do with the ground around them.
Same thing with the food we eat. Nothing to do with the ground around us. Its hard to get a wholesome thing to eat in a developed country such as our own. I thought that the gastro-intestinal adaptation to Nepali food would be a challenge for my system, but in fact the reverse has been true. My stomach is challenged by the reintroduction of preservatives and whitebread and the crazy variation of an american diet, and since i got back i haven't had a normal bowel movement. Corn grown in Nebraska and processed in Pennsylvania, packaged in New Jersey, and shipped in a truck to a warehouse in Maine, delivered to the grocery store down the street. Who knows what my body will do with that? On the other hand, rice grown by my neighbor and potatoes from my back yard, that's a little more manageable. Nothing about our lives here has anything to do with ground around us. This is the distinct advantage that a developing country has, head and shoulders above us. They live close to the ground around them, their food and their water and their houses and their primary mode of transport, all straight from the ground. Where does ours come from? Who knows?
I don't understand how some of these things came about. Why we have developed the way we have is a mystery. The life in a developing country is easy to understand: things have come about through necessity, through the real needs of humanity. In our "developed" country, though, necessity is lost, and things develop through convenience. Necessity is the mother of invention, but convenience is its in-bred cousin. Living by necessity, one must live in harmony with one's surroundings, because it is the only way to survive. On the other hand, when necessity is cast aside, and convenience becomes the driving factor, things become a twisted mess of fad and fashion, decadence and desire, totally disconnected from the true needs of people, and the true needs of people are forgotten, and no longer met. This is a lamentable state to be in. Although we may be the richest country in the world in some respects, in other aspects, we are the poorest.
I spoke to my miith-juu, my soul-friend in Nepal, about the richness of his country. I told him that everybody in Nepal seemed so happy, smiling all the time. He said "If you look inside of us, though, you will see a sadness, a deep grief." I said, "In the same way, you look at us in America, and it looks to you a rich life, but on the inside, we are a poor people, lacking in our true needs, the needs of our spirit. On the other hand, people in Nepal look poor on the outside, while on the inside you are rich, in brotherhood, and love, in the true needs of spirit." Human beings, to be truly happy, must first attend to these true needs that we have all but forgotten in our striving for convenience and our forgetfulness of necessity.
A bit of perspective is all we need. To see our decadent lives in relation to the lives of these bare survivors helps, but it is not enough. We must throw away our superiority, our desire to bring them "UP" to our level, and we must learn from them what they have to teach. I have never had to think for a day in my life where my food is coming from, the effect of the sun and the rains on my crop. This is an impoverished way of nourishment. I have chosen instead to put my knees in the dirt and learn these things. I do not live the hard life of the mountain people, nor can i pretend that i ever have, carrying my 20-pound backpack up past the porter laboring under his 220-pound load. But i have learned from these things, learning to appreciate the real stuff of life, how to nourish the deepest seed of life, and how to feed the human soul. I wish that everyone would step back and take a look at their life from the outside, to see the way that we live for what it is, to live another way for at least a day, in order to gain a wider perspective of how to truly live. Whatever you do, give it a try.
most sincerely,
mark andrew heffernan
posted by Mark Heffernan at 6:43 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home