Kelly shares an experience of sexual harrassment and culture-shock while living in Cairo:
It took a long time for me to process that culture shock–perhaps I am still–but one thing I know is this: The conversation is dynamic between an individual and her environment and just as it would be absolutely absurd to respond in a conversation with your friend with the same one line, it is absurd to respond to life experiences with the same old line. To be engaged in this narrative with others, our environment, our religions…requires creativity, expression, and risk. This is what I think. What about you?
Life can be so contradictory, whenever we form fixed opinions it has a way of proving us wrong, if we’re open to it. Otherwise we remain stuck and suffer.
What is required?
Fluidity. If you try to cling to your old beliefs and habits, you will end up missing all that the new place has to offer. You will close yourself to any possibilities of exploration. You will become lost in translation as you search for a meaning which computes with your preconceived notions.
Willingness to laugh at yourself. To look deeply and acknowledge that so much about you is unconsiously shaped by where you have grown up.
Listening, openness. Even if you don’t understand the what or why, acknowledging the universal humanity in others.
Appreciating the diversity of experiences. Humility in seeing that there are many rights and wrongs as shaped by place and time.
This thing we call life can be so complicated! Or so simple.
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