Monday, August 1, 2011

Adapting

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You grow up believing a certain thing. You learn a certain way of life. You learn what is "right" and what is "good".

Then you travel to a new place.

Here, people eat beef, drink alcohol since teenage years, smoke stuff, leave home and become independent around the time they can vote, celebrate festivals you know about but are ignorant about the ones you care about, take off on unplanned hitch-hiking trips across several countries, aren't married even at 35, are perfectly okay joking about their beliefs and customs...

Over time, you adjust to certain things. Your digestive tract can handle assaults of heavy meat-based diet, alcohol affects you lesser and smoking of any kind still disgusts you. You enjoy the independence, love trips but still can't fathom the unplanned, time-unbound travels, and find your own way to share your festivals.

You realize that you can't really forsake "your culture" and start figuring out which parts of it work well with you and which don't. You love some traits and customs the "other cultures" have. But some of them still fall in the grey zone. You realize you still have a lot of soul-searching to do to decide how you want to live and be comfortable with the decisions you make.

There's still a lot to figure out.