Human Nature

During my 4 weeks away from Nepal, Devon and Liz made plenty of new friends for me to come back to.  On Sunday night, we went to an apartment-warming party for Marisa, another American who has been here for just under 2 months and has decided to stay indefinitely.  We became fast friends, perhaps partly because of our similar backgrounds, as both of us are single, thirty-something, non-practicing lawyers who are each on a journey to find happiness after going without it for so long (and we don’t care if we have to go across the world to find it), and partly because she is just plain awesome. 

As we sat on her floor eating a fantastic dinner made by our new friend Leiben (daal bhat of course, with lamb – yum!), I looked around the room and thought about how amazing it was to have such a diverse group of people sitting, eating, talking, laughing like old, long-lost friends.  The 14 of us represented 4 continents, coming together from the United States, Australia, Nepal, Germany, Finland, China, and Canada.  It was awesome.  And so refreshing to meet more Nepalese people and hear about their much more progressive views on many topics of interest (my favorite, if you haven’t noticed, being the whole arranged marriage/marrying within a caste system situation).  These new friends told us that they believe in marrying for love, regardless of the person’s caste, culture, and even religion.  Leiben said it best, “I am a human being first and Nepali second.”  I couldn’t agree more.  We are all human beings first, and we shouldn’t be defined or limited by our different backgrounds.  It is still hard to grasp that such a simple concept is so hard for many people to carry out into real life.  There is absolutely no reason people should be discriminated against because of gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, etc.  Inherently, we are all human beings, and we are all equal. 

Sidenote – the girl from Germany and the girl from China are both dating Nepali men.  I love that there are people here who are willing to defy their cultural norms.  Maybe there is still hope for me…