Ruminating

I've been back from India for only a week, and I've already been back in an airplane twice. But Orange County, CA and Tucson, AZ are hardly as exhilarating as where I've been the past two months.

This is the life I've lived for 24 years: wide freeways, big cars, three-story houses, discount warehouses, central air conditioning, multiple cars, pressurized tap water, expensive pet food and services, excellent customer service, and so on. This is the life I'm used to...it's perfectly normal for me. Yet, as usual after a trip to a developing area, I feel very cynical about my surroundings and myself.

How much plastic waste do I generate shopping at Trader Joe's (as much as I adore it)? How much water do I waste when I make use of the wonderful, hot water that bursts out of the tap? How much extra food do I eat out of boredom? How much energy do I waste running on a belt at the gym for 45 minutes, spending so many calories but accomplishing nothing, for no one? How much gas do I waste satisfying my every whim and fancy, traveling wherever I want to go all by myself in my very own gas-guzzling car?

Ouch. I probably sound really cynical, and right now, I am. Some would calls this "reverse culture shock," which is probably self-explanatory. It means that after the shock of getting used to Indian culture, I'm having trouble adjusting to my own (former, pre-existing) way of life. I thought that was silly--it can't be that difficult to bounce back to the life you've been living for 24 years (give or take several weeks of travel a year)--but it actually is.

India had a great impact on me. I made connections, thanks to CFHI, with several NGOs that with God's help, I hope to revisit one day. I'd like to establish a care home or a clinic of my own there one day, and slowly but surely build it up and more importantly build up the human capacity to sustain it. Eventually, after it's self-sufficient, I will simply be a frequent visitor, a benefactor, a consultant. I will have moved on to the next project, training new people to care for their communities. It's a dream.

Meanwhile, does it make a difference to the pollution-filled beaches I saw in Mumbai, whether or not I recycle my thin plastic goods? I don't know. But I'm going to keep pushing myself to remember what I experienced in the old country, and to change my actions to reflect a better appreciation of the impact of less fortunate circumstances. Because it's not just the poor countries and the rich countries for themselves these days. What we do affects everyone. And even now, even with our botched foreign policy and inadequate homeland security, nowhere is the previous maxim more true than in the U.S. That comes from the mouths of Indians.