the importance (or lack thereof) of shared experiences

Something that’s been on my mind a lot during the past few months is the loneliness that I’ve felt as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I’ve written about it before, and here we are again. As PCVs, we feel alone because we live in new homes far, far from our home homes, because we have to use a foreign language every day, because we can’t get anywhere without asking for a ride, and because we’re just so different than those around us in so many ways.

Recently, I’ve been trying to get to the root of this loneliness that I feel, in an attempt to overcome it. I realized that, along with many other problems (past and present) in my life, the feeling of loneliness comes from feeling misunderstood. It comes from feeling like “nobody gets me” (cue angsty middle school music) and like I’m going through it all alone. And, to be fair, I am misunderstood in many ways. For starters, my role as a volunteer is often unclear both to myself and to the students, other teachers, and villagers in my community. My physical appearance is a constant topic of conversation: “Kru Yut, why is your hair curly? Why do you have so much hair? Why are you so tall? WHY is your nose so big!?”

As well as I can speak Thai, I still often find myself struggling to voice my feelings about many things. Even if I’m capable of expressing myself in Thai, the delicate, complex, often-contradictory nature of Thai culture usually encourages me to internalize these feelings. I feel like people at home don’t understand the work that I’m doing or the problems I face and, thanks to my overwhelmingly positive posts on social media, assume that all I do is eat Pad Thai and bpai tiao (travel). Other volunteers live in totally different communities with varying levels of development and amenities and even we don’t completely understand what one another is going through at any given moment. I’m the only Middle Eastern PCV in Thailand, and it seems like we’re a rare breed of PCVs in general. I just feel like people don’t get me sometimes.

A common theme arose. A lot of this loneliness comes from feeling like my experience is an individual one. As humans, we frequently want other people to be doing the same things we’re doing, or at least understanding what or why we do what we do. There’s power in shared experiences. Take, for example, watching a funny movie. Chances are, you’re more likely to laugh out loud in a movie theater than in your bed at home. Something about being with other people, doing the same thing at the same time, heightens the experience.

So, after all of this tragically morose soul-searching, I came to the realization that it doesn’t fucking matter. None of it.

You could argue that sharing experiences with others is an innate part of the human condition, essential for survival. Sure enough, isolation can lead to relative insanity (Wilson, anyone?).  As humans we will also come across challenges that are characteristically unique. For me, and for now, that individual challenge is my Peace Corps service.

I think it’s important to realize the value of these challenges. I could just as easily have stayed at home in America, well within my comfort zone, eating Chik-Fil-A and sushi whenever I please. But where’s the fun in that?