Writing for a change

Sitting in Kathmandu faced with this blank paper my thoughts begins to make sense; the puzzle is falling into place.
3 months ago sitting back home in Denmark I weren’t sure about whether I wanted to go to Nepal as a volunteer at all – my life was just fine as it was; I had a great Job, some great friends and was just about to move into an apartment – I was quite satisfied with my life.
The keyword in this is; satisfied. I think us Danes are too self-satisfied, we each have all you could possible need, both in a materialistic and a social point of view – we are not to worry about much, if we fall, BIGMOTHER will catch us and bring us back into society.
There is nothing bad in this, however, this ‘self-satisfiedism’ has placed us in something similar to Platons’ cavepicture – we only see the shadows, not the things in its real forms.
With pictures of fairytales pulled over our eyes, we proclaim freedom, with the right to freedom of speech in the one hand and the sword in the other – at the same time we are putting up boarder gates to secure our castle. Only chosen ones are allowed entrance; those who are willing to look like us – we are speaking with two tongs.
Instead of looking at the world with the eyes of assimilation, we should praise the diversity of the different cultures – if we don’t do that, we will maintain blind and not see people as what they really are, but as metaphors of something else.
We have to break out of the pseudo-lives most of us are living, even though it is difficult, since it’s something we are born into and are holding onto, to maintain the identity we have built to protect us from the harsh facts of life, furthermore this also makes us blind for all the beauty there is to be found outside our daily-life-horizon.
That’s where I am right now, here in Kathmandu among the Nepalese people with all their smiles and overwhelming generosity despite their poor conditions – here I have realized that I am not only a Dane either an European, but I am a global citizen and with that follows great responsibility.