Culture Shock
I know, I've been posting a lot since I've been on holiday. It's just that for me, this is a holiday. I love writing. I haven't put pen to paper in quite some time, and a week ago I decided to journal on paper rather than keyboard, and it felt sooo good. Reminded me of the deep love for writing I've always felt. Not that I don't feel it this way, too, but there's something more raw and real about doing it with a pen and paper. I'm less self-conscious, less able to "edit". To tweak and make sound "just right."
Anyhow, so far this vacation has been really relaxing. I've had time to do my favorite things: sleep in!! (I can safely say I slept in no more than 5 times this entire year) Read. Write. Reflect.
The last one, reflect, I do in Haifa, too. (Well I do all of the last three, but have less time for reading and writing than I've had here.) But in Haifa it's more...intense. These past few days I've felt..I will preface this by saying this isn't the right word, but I don't have the right word...numb.
Not bad. I've felt happy to be with my zhena joon and poya aziz, and I am obsessed with their dog Bebo (who loves me, too!). But regarding certain things, things I usually think about more scrutinizingly, I've felt very little. No emotion at all.
I guess it's true that everything is amplified in Haifa.
Anyway, I actually did not intend to state any of the above and am not sure why I did...but I guess it's down now so why not leave it?
Anyhow, so with regards to my previous post about shopping not being a culture shock, I can name one thing that has been. Television. Especially music television. This is not to say that I never watch tv shows in Haifa because my flatmates and I do. But it's stuff that we selectively choose to watch and search for carefully. None of the channelsurfing as one might have on tv.
In any event, I've started surfing through channels and caught a few new music videos and artists I'd never seen or heard of, and I cannot help but feel washed over by an immense sense of sadness and loss when I watch these girls whore themselves--there is, frankly, no better word-- on television. Young girls, older women. No innocence, no dignity.
It's very sad. That they think their appealingness is measured in their revealingness.
It's also very sad that having been immersed in this culture almost my entire life, it never shocked me as much as it did now. It probably (read: definitely) influenced me and the way I dressed, the way I talked to other girls. The things I thought boys were supposed to like me for.
I've always had the Baha'i Writings and community to temper this influence, have always had morally conservative--and I love them for it--parents to help guide me. And still I have struggled and still struggle with these things.
So as I watched these lost girls on tv shaking everything, wearing barely anything, and knew that they thought they'd made it--had hit the climax of their existences, with money and "sexiness" and hot boys and desirability all peaking-- I felt shame. Shame for them. For myself. For what we've become as a people, and for how far we have to go.
I hope my children, future children, are shielded from these tests, unlikely as that may be. I hope the hem of their skirt or appeal of their flirtation is never the yardstick they use to measure their own self worth.
I hope a lot of things.
Anyhow, so far this vacation has been really relaxing. I've had time to do my favorite things: sleep in!! (I can safely say I slept in no more than 5 times this entire year) Read. Write. Reflect.
The last one, reflect, I do in Haifa, too. (Well I do all of the last three, but have less time for reading and writing than I've had here.) But in Haifa it's more...intense. These past few days I've felt..I will preface this by saying this isn't the right word, but I don't have the right word...numb.
Not bad. I've felt happy to be with my zhena joon and poya aziz, and I am obsessed with their dog Bebo (who loves me, too!). But regarding certain things, things I usually think about more scrutinizingly, I've felt very little. No emotion at all.
I guess it's true that everything is amplified in Haifa.
Anyway, I actually did not intend to state any of the above and am not sure why I did...but I guess it's down now so why not leave it?
Anyhow, so with regards to my previous post about shopping not being a culture shock, I can name one thing that has been. Television. Especially music television. This is not to say that I never watch tv shows in Haifa because my flatmates and I do. But it's stuff that we selectively choose to watch and search for carefully. None of the channelsurfing as one might have on tv.
In any event, I've started surfing through channels and caught a few new music videos and artists I'd never seen or heard of, and I cannot help but feel washed over by an immense sense of sadness and loss when I watch these girls whore themselves--there is, frankly, no better word-- on television. Young girls, older women. No innocence, no dignity.
It's very sad. That they think their appealingness is measured in their revealingness.
It's also very sad that having been immersed in this culture almost my entire life, it never shocked me as much as it did now. It probably (read: definitely) influenced me and the way I dressed, the way I talked to other girls. The things I thought boys were supposed to like me for.
I've always had the Baha'i Writings and community to temper this influence, have always had morally conservative--and I love them for it--parents to help guide me. And still I have struggled and still struggle with these things.
So as I watched these lost girls on tv shaking everything, wearing barely anything, and knew that they thought they'd made it--had hit the climax of their existences, with money and "sexiness" and hot boys and desirability all peaking-- I felt shame. Shame for them. For myself. For what we've become as a people, and for how far we have to go.
I hope my children, future children, are shielded from these tests, unlikely as that may be. I hope the hem of their skirt or appeal of their flirtation is never the yardstick they use to measure their own self worth.
I hope a lot of things.
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