It's Sunday. And since there is not an LDS/Mormon sacrament service in town, I have decided to make Sundays holy in other ways. (Is it bad that later today I'm going to have a "remembrance moment" and pray over bread and water?) I originally planned on spending Sundays exploring other temples and churches, seeking to know God as different religions do. However, I learned that most activity in the temples and churches take place in the evening. This is tricky since I was directed by friends not to stay out too late past sunset. At any rate, I'll visit the Ganesh Hindu temple later today when the sun is not so fiery. In the meantime, I've been reading The Hindu -India's national newspaper-, talking with my host family, reading scriptures, pondering, and meditating.
In my attempts to practice mindfulness, my attention constantly comes back to my recurring emotional pattern of each day. I wake up rested, adventurous, and fascinated with this new culture and world which I have entered. I go out and explore. I greet women in the stores who look at me curiously with a smile, a "vanakkam," and a head bob (I don't acknowledge any of the mens' stares). I ask a barrage of questions and take notes in my jottings journal. I write follow-up questions that I want to inquire about later. Then, around 4 o'clock or so, I begin to feel the emotional drain, the exhaustion of having taken in so many news things. The toll of being in a completely new environment away from everything with which I have grown up. By 9 o'clock at night I'm on the verge of tears wondering what the hell I'm doing here, feeling the familiar tightness of chest and throat, and texting my mom to make sure she knows I love her and miss her. All the while, I feel ashamed for feeling homesick.
Homesickness. My thoughts and shame keep coming back to damn homesickness. More than that, my thoughts keep coming back to the shame I'd feel if others I care about, and particularly whose opinions of me I care about, would *gasp* discover my homesickness!! What would they think?! I'm not as adventurous of a person as they thought! Who is this girl, psh, feeling homesick?!
My thoughts keep going back to that. I keep remembering how I felt embarrassed of telling some people in my life that I wanted to go to India; I worried they did not think me to be "strong enough" to go. I remember my first inklings of a desire to come; I felt sheepish about it. "Oh no," I'd say. "I'm not good enough to go there." And now, in the calm evenings after dinner when I grow sentimental of home, of family and friends in America, I fear that I was right: I'm not fit to be here.
Three years ago I started therapy at my school's Counseling Center. I went in to fix myself. To have this stereotypical, media-simulated transformation where I would reemerge a new and "fixed" person. Voila! I felt that I had some psychological disorder in loving people too much, in being "too attached" , or "unhealthy". Due to various events, I felt that being so loving of people was wrong. I became entrenched in depression, for the above and other heartachy reasons. But after three years of this mindfulness therapy group, I realized nothing was wrong with me at all. Rather, this love and connection with people and friends is something beautiful.
Maybe my evening homesickness is like that too. Perhaps it is beautiful to have courage to go somewhere new, knowing it will be uncomfortable, while simultaneously longing for the people I've left behind. Perhaps it is beautiful to continue to think about the various people I love, who are miles and miles away.
One evening a long time ago, I had dinner at Mazza's in Salt Lake with a friend of mine who had been to India. I told her about my desire to one day go. Then I asked, "What if I have major culture shock? What if I get all mopey and crazy and homesick?" Robyn looked at me and said, "Then you'll be like everyone else who moves to India and experiences the same thing." Wise words.
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