Returning, in May 2013, to Nepal after my traumatic 12-day experience in a Qatari Jail following the massive Free Dorje Gurung campaign (thank you all!) I discovered and learned a great deal about Nepalis and Nepal.
One of the things I discovered the first few months in Kathmandu was how people had all sorts of expectations and ideas for what I should do with my life. About a dozen, including at least a few school friends and others I personally know, actually had concrete ideas and plans for me, all different of course. Some of them involved working with them on something.
Furthermore, long after I decided on what to do, as I came across more and more Nepali friends, relatives, community members, and past acquaintances, and got introduced to Nepali strangers who knew about me, I learned that many of them had DEFINITE opinions about what would be or would have been the best use of my time, skills, experiences etc. in Nepal.
What were some of the “expectations”? Working at rural schools they had connections to (at least three, and all three schools, of course, in completely different locations), opening and running a private school they would all invest money in, working on Nepali migrant rights issues with them, being a brand ambassador for a financial institution heavily involved in remittance business etc.!
A few didn’t share the details. They only told me that we could sit down and discuss their idea, their plan, seriously only if I were really interested.
As many friends, relatives, acquaintances and others in Nepal already know, I chose to work with my buddy Jayjeev at Community Members Interested on the education of children at government (public) schools instead. (I have since quit that.) Following that decision, I discovered something very curious.
The dozen or so people with definite and concrete ideas for what I should do with my life in Nepal stopped discussing their ideas with me. Really, they completely stopped any and all conversations about all of that. No conversation on possibly collaborating for example. No conversation on possibly working together on an aspect of what they had envisioned etc.
It was clear — not just based on that, but also on what I heard back from people who know those people and about their ideas — that I had disappointed them. One even let me know in person about the fact that I had let him down. He was let down because I didn’t take up on his offer to go work in education of children in a remote district in Nepal — his district.
And in time, I discovered others — including strangers, pretty much every single one of them also Nepali and had heard and learned about me from the Free Dorje Gurung campaign — who had also been disappointed with what I had chosen to do, for all kinds of different reasons of their own.
To state the obvious, choosing to do what I did had EVERYTHING to do with me and NOT them, of course. I chose the path I did for personal reasons. Clearly, that was something they all had missed or ignored or, worse, didn’t care.
Of course, I did NOT make that choice to spite them or as a gesture of defiance or whatever, for example. I say that because, I suspect, some saw it that way! At least a couple had appeared completely convinced that they knew better what I needed to do or should have done, and that I had erred!
(Besides, even if I had wanted to, or even if I had attempted to, let alone the expectations of everyone who had expectations, I wouldn’t have been able to satisfy the expectations of even the dozen who had concrete ideas! It would have been stupid of me to even ATTEMPT to satisfy all their expectations!)
To reiterate, the most IMPORTANT and CRUCIAL reasons for making the decision I did as far as my second career was concerned were intrinsic, not extrinsic.
What one does in life must be for oneself…not in a selfish way, of course. That is, the justification for and the drive behind one’s most important decisions, actions, and values must come from within, they must be intrinsic.
That, incidentally, has been reinforced, reaffirmed, and revalidated by a myriad of experiences in Nepal since returning to the country about eight years ago.
What do you think?
(Incidentally, this blog post is a reworking of a January 21, 2018 Facebook post, which you can read here. And while, disappointment in the choices I made abounded among Nepalis, my Grinnell College classmates, on the other hand, nominated and elected me to be one of the recipients of an Alumni Award at our 25th Reunion in recognition of my work in education and social justice etc.)
