Losing yourself

With all the wonderful experiences that encompass my life in Paraguay, I think it is important to share some of the biggest challenges I have faced as a volunteer. When reflecting on what is the hardest part of my life here, I think it’s just sometimes not being able to be my complete self. Jokes are lost culturally and through language, ways of thinking, intellectual conversations, hobbies. When I am upset, I always have to stay positive and remind myself that I’m a representative of something a lot bigger than myself.

I’m stripped of so much self-expression here because you have to come to the level of how people operate taking into account how you’re perceived constantly. You sacrifice a lot of who you are, what you enjoy doing or discussing, by nature of being in a community where things are just so different. When I deal with bouts of racism, there’s no one that really understands what I’m going through. We have fellow volunteers to talk to, but sometimes it’s not enough. On some issues, I just don’t have anyone to relate to. There are aspects of life that I have in common with some of the people in my community: the common interest for improving the lives of those less fortunate, family, talking about sports, and a general curiosity to learn new things. With all of this however, it is frustrating to think that at the end of 2 years many people still might not really get where I’m coming from.

I think just by nature of my experience living the way I do, it’s a beautiful struggle that teaches you so much about yourself and life. I wish more Americans did something like this at some point in their lives. Being taken completely out of one’s comfort zone not only in terms of things like food, water, or style of living, but intellectually, and in terms of self- expression and how one relates to other people. If we don’t have to serve in the military, I think we as citizens should have to do something like Peace Corps when we come of age. After all, we didn’t earn our citizenship, and for that matter who does? We won a lottery and were arbitrarily born into conditions that supercede 95% of the rest of the world. One can only wonder what this world would be like if more of us had to spend a time in our lives where we were completely absorbed by the precarious situations of people thousands of miles from us or( sometimes simply on the other side of town). Would that change how we lived our daily lives, the assumptions we made, and what we dedicated our lives to? Would we have more meaning, be less concerned with vanity, be less depressed, less image conscious, less materialistic, and more happy?