Social Media, Beauty, and Death

I believe myself to be quite a shallow person. Despite how I dress, despite who I read, despite how I speak, for simplicity and distraction are missing from my life, and I do nothing but complain and check to see if they have returned. Today marks almost a week since the Nepal Social Media Ban, and I am not the sole shallow person on the planet. I know I am far, far down on the list of others, but today has created such a large and heavy topic that it is necessary to question with the world—to what extent have social media platforms assumed control of our lives? Scattered pieces of the answer hide in the events I took no part in and had no idea of until after my work was finished. Thousands of young men and women stormed the streets of Nepal just outside the government building here in Kathmandu to protest the ban. It led further from a protest and closer to a controlled riot, with the commencement of fires, the army being called in, and around twenty people killed. All because of social media. Granted, WhatsApp had also been banned, but I fear the truth is many of those people weren't fighting for the justice of the app that is solely messaging. As I sat listening to the news, Bijata's daughter—a telephone addict—came up to me excited that YouTube and Instagram had returned because of the protestation. Truth be told, I checked to see if mine had returned alongside hers (they hadn't) but had to stop and consider the fact that the government had lifted the ban on social media to provide a sense of control and prevent more deaths from ensuing. At this point in my day, there had been only four deaths. And I do not say "only" as though they were not humans too; humans fighting for our rights of having something and the injustice of it being so easily taken away as though we are merely the government's pets and they toy with our wants and our needs to see how long we can take it until we crack. Was less than a week strength during a crisis of learning we'd lost something we consider a necessity in our lives? Or was less than a week so short of a time that we need to reconsider all of our lives and why they are less important than the lives you watch or doomscroll on an hourly basis.

***

The day started questionably so. I'd gone to bed later than expected the night prior and woke, unfortunately, quite early to the sound of what seemed to be every single stray and domesticated dog in Kathmandu barking at the wind. After a light breakfast (and I use that term loosely), Bijata and I traversed the busy, therefore terrifying, Nepal roads to commence our work at the SDSS later that day. We sat in her office as I read sweet nothings in a book of letters and Bijata had her personal, half-hour Bible study. Afterwards, she came to sit in front of me to commence the weekly "check-in" I believed was not truly going to happen. She asked me how I was doing, and I had closed myself off with quite vague and quippy responses in the hopes it would move on quickly. This was not because I dislike speaking with Bijata—in fact, I feel so comfortable with her as though she is a whole other mother—but I was tired, and unfortunately, that causes some very uncomfortable thoughts and memories to wander to the front of my mind, and I believed Bijata did not want to occupy her own grieving and busy life to host my own. I could tell she was unsatisfied by my responses, but I continued the way I had started until she decided to share. She'd asked me if I'd ever had anxiety and what it felt like. I explained my experiences, and she declared the physical feelings were reciprocated and that she consistently prays for lack of anxiety in her life, more stability. I believe we all pray/hope/wish for such a thing, but did not tell her, for she was telling me of a story she was reading in the Old Testament about the building of a structure. She mentioned the fact that she was built and knocked right back down, an allusion to this piece of writing from the Bible. After her description and metaphor, I wanted to chime in that not only was she built the same way as the story structure, but no one knew how to build her in the beginning, either. It was two people who began who she was, and it escalated from there, same as everyone. She gave me in-depth scenarios of her life and how she was praying to fix it, then looked at me expectantly for me to open up similar to her. I cried. I did. I knew not how I felt; I still do not. I know at the moment in my life, hardly anyone can truly help me through my mental and emotional battles, and so I told her that. Yet, I chose to open up about something else few people know of and that has been haunting me on and off for the past three years. I shall not mention it here, but the decision, it seems, to speak to Bijata about proved to be quite useful and comforting. Never in my near decade of trauma have I spoken to someone with quite the same vibe as her.

I was outside with the kids all morning (and I say kids, but I learned recently that our learning group spans from 6-29 years of age) and was once again thrown into teaching. Merely for an hour, but it happened regardless. I was to teach the Introduction which were basically answers to small talk questions: "What is your name? My name is______.  How old are you? I am _____  years old. Where do you live? I live in ______." This proved quite useful as later on, speaking to Rajuna, it came to my attention that they are quite a shy bunch of ragtag people, but they seemed quite confident with me. There I was surrounded by four other women, three employees, two being teachers, and a college volunteer, most likely for credits. I sat with them as they slowly took over the job I didn't originally want, but missed when it was gone, and I had a short conversation with the employee as the two teachers chose to leave us all to our own devices. She asked me about Nepal. I said it was loud but very pretty, and she looked at me and told me, "just like you. You are very beautiful." I was speechless, for it reminded me of merely the night before when I was walking a sister to bed and she looked at me and said, "Sister, you are very beautiful." I was shocked. It had come from a place of love, but was the first thing to break the long silence. I resorted to my natural instinct of thanking her, returning the compliment, and complimented her on her pigtails, which she truly did look amazing in. I found it so fascinating in those few precious moments the cultural and bias differences of beauty. When I first saw most of the young women in Nepal, I thought they were gorgeous and confident, and I did not believe I measured up, at least not physically (since I am a young woman myself and was unfortunately taught by a very insecure mother how to be insecure. Luckily, it hasn't hit me until my adult years.) and now they are here telling me that in their eyes, I am beautiful. I do allow my insecurities to question whether they mean my personality or my physicality. Women are precious. Humans are precious. We point out the things we believe in other people only to have them tie back to our own insecurities. The young girl from the night before, I could tell in her face, she did not believe her beauty withstood the beauty she told me I held, and it broke me. Consistently in her life had she most likely been told horrid things, some spanning from the word "ugly" to the "hate" word and, unfortunately, her mind chose to believe those words because she would know no other.

Now I was wearing what felt like pajama bottoms, a Scooby-Doo t-shirt from Walmart, and the messiest ponytail known to mankind, and she continued to see beauty in me. She wore her green and pink pajama set with pigtails and a kind smile, and I saw so much beauty in her. Forget what society tells you. It is not the clothes that make up the beauty, nor the makeup, the hair, nothing physical. It is our own perspectives and souls that make us beautiful. We perceived each other as lovely—her, for whatever reason she had to deliver that lovely line, and me because she could deliver the line and she believed it, and if she looked in the mirror, she should see the epitome of perfection. I love her.

The afternoon consisted of coloring, protest news reports, and drifting in and out of consciousness due to lack of sleep. Bijata had promised me she would take me back to the DRC, but unfortunately came upon some distractions, so she hired the skinny forty-year-old man who bathes in cologne, bleached the top of his hair, shaved the sides, and wears a mask for his cough to take me in the car. The prior description does not do this man justice until you meet him face to face (and smell him ten feet away) to realize he truly is a man who would get confused over a simple task. I do not blame him; I have the same issue, yet somehow, if I am told to take the 18-year-old girl who does not come with a helmet back to her residence, you'd think common sense would kick in and you would take the car. That was not the case. I rode what they call a scooter, what North Americans call a motorcycle, and what I called one of the scarier moments in my life.

Once I returned (safely, if not a little shaken), I was immediately greeted by the smiling faces of the kids from the DRC whom I like to believe I have won over, somewhat. I was once again invited to play Ping-Pong/Table Tennis, which happened for close to an hour, and I have significantly improved since I learned three days ago. We ate and returned to their study home in order to play Uno. This Uno game taught me so much about the children and reminded me that, regardless of what they have been through and the maturity levels they've so quickly grown to, they remain children and have laughed their hearts out during this game, which was complicated for the victim of the laughter, which led to shaking, rolling on the floor, yelling in order for their add-on to be heard, and his own light chuckles chiming in. I finished my night playing Table Tennis once more with my champion (who chose to reintroduce himself—Sager, his name is) and another young lady whose name escapes me, but the meaning of it was "to be loved," which I thought was beautiful. I had learned some unfortunate news that so many of my kids from DRC were leaving in a week, returning to their families, and as excited as I am for them, they shall be missed. We later spoke a little, and my family description came up once more (it had been asked Saturday as well), and so I decided to continue with the truth that my mother died, and I received the universal apologetic response, yet both these kids and Bijata, herself, didn't seem to shift so much when it came to the constant rising death count from the protest. Perhaps they were taught that a number was a number, not just people. Perhaps since it did not affect them and they knew of none of them, they did not believe they needed to raise awareness or an emotion. I am not sure how they decided to go about emoting the loss of their citizens for their own personal desire, and that is not up to me to decide. I do hope the families of these young people do find closure at some point in their lives, and I hope this all becomes another lesson in gratitude and perseverance for myself and you fellow readers that what we get is very much deserved because it is chosen to be given to us, and others cannot take it away as easily as they think. But, on the side of gratitude, thank the world for what you have been given and for what has been so heavily fought for. Be it social media or a type of right or whatever else, I hope someday the necessary gratitude towards what we have will be received, understood, and partaken by thousands of other people.