For the short existence of my life, I have taken many things for granted, things I didn’t know I had excess of until not having enough of them. When I think of home, suddenly luxuries appear in my mind, I almost don’t miss them because I have learned to live without. And they are luxuries. I believe many of us feel it is our right, our countries duty to provide the things we think we can not live without. Things like toilets that flush paper and showers with pressure above a dribble. Constant hot water, drinkable tap water and pipes that don’t freeze. Heat and electricity that always work. Having machines that drop sand so our roads aren’t covered in ice and cars that don’t emit too much exhaust. Things like personal space and personal cars. Health codes, building codes and all other codes. Internet in any from outside of dial up and fast food restaurants with drive up. Food that is safe to eat and stores that are safe to buy from.
Knowledge that prices are set in stone and that inflation will not appear just because you look like a foreigner. We think we cant live without our pantry of instant foods and our microwave that produces instantaneous gratification. We want to live with the world at our finger tips and complain when we have to park at the back of the parking lot. You don’t like that walk? Try walking to the store and carry all the groceries back, no car! We don’t want to try, we don’t want to do more than we have to because we think it is our right to have what we want, when we want it.
I wonder, what made us like this? When the majority of the world lives without so many of the things we think we can not live without - who are we to complain? We can live without them, most people do. Here, people have three outfits tops, not because they are desolate, but because… do we really need more than that? Have just enough to wear one, have one being washed and have a back up… doesn’t that sound practical? What if it didn’t matter if you wore the same shirt two… maybe three days in a row. If everyone was doing it, then you would too… right? I remember when if you wore the same shirt twice in a weeks time people would comment. What is that? Its not that our things are bad… but do we really need all we have? Are our things necessary to survival? I think not. I have lived with and learned to love people who have so much less and are so much happier. I have eaten from the tables of old people who live and sleep in their only clothes and played with orphans who wear donated clothes - they had so much joy to give me. They live practically because they can.
Coming home, I am excited. I am excited to have a shower so hot that I can just stand there and let it run all over my body without fear that it will turn to icicles before I rinse the shampoo out. I am excited to have shampoo in a language I understand and toilets that are not freezing cold and where I can flush my toilet paper. I am excited to find the clothes in my closet that I left behind and eat in restaurants where I can trust the food. But in a small way, I will miss this style of living. I will miss no one caring if I wear the same sweater 5 out of 7 days per week. I will miss sitting close to strangers on public transit and trying to communicate with my hands and smile - but I will enjoy being able to eavesdrop on conversations and read billboards again. I hope to never take for granted what I have been given and to never forget the life I have lived and the viewing of other peoples lives. The lessons I learned from spending time with nuns who gave all they had to serve their King. Not because they were looking for something better or more money, no, they gave up their possessions, their life, so that they could love on little children who had no one to love them. I hope to never live complexly, but to keep things simple. To not demand luxuries, but to live without because it is my choice.
I suppose a reverse culture shock awaits me. A culture where hospitality is not embraced and most tables are not open to strangers. Where we are so scared to touch each other that we leave whole seats open on buses and benches. A place where we get angry when others don’t speak our language and never bother to try to communicate outside of saying something vain in English. I am returning to a place where discrimination takes place and people are judged. Home is a place of expensive coffee and gas hogging cars. We go fast and we do a lot - this is who we are. It is not all bad. This is just our culture, a place that would be as much shock to a Bulgarian or Armenian as their countries were to me. The one major thing I have learned from coming overseas “It may be different, but different is not wrong and different is not bad.” Home is the culture I know, the one that knows me, the one that brought me up and that shaped me into who I am. Home is the place I want to be and it is the culture that helps define me - but I hope to let other cultures impact me too.
So as my mind is spinning with cultures and traditions and languages I think about the one thing that is true, the only constant - Jesus Christ. He is the same yesterday, today and forever. No matter where I go or what decisions I make, he will be there. He created me and placed me into cultures so that I might learn. But he is the ultimate culture, his culture is greater and stronger than any other in the world. His culture is the Kingdom of Heaven and he desires that it be spread to all peoples, nations and cultures.
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