Acclimation

Here is an analogy I’ve been thinking about in honor of Sir Edmund Hillary.

When people climb Mt. Everest they have to do it in stages. The most important place on that mountain isn’t always the top, but the base camp. The people climb up a bit then climb back down and do some adjusting to the altitude. Then they climb up a bit higher and then back down to a new base camp at a slightly higher altitude. You can’t just sprint to the top of a mountain because the environment is so radically different that it’ll kill you.

Sometimes I think moving to India feels a little like climbing a mountain. If I sprinted into a life here, just dove into all of the new things at once, I don’t think I’d make it. It wouldn’t kill me, but it would be pretty emotionally dangerous. Living in Mumbai is hard. Really hard. There are a lot of beautiful things about this culture and this city, but a lot of things are draining, frustrating and heart wrenching. I’ve realized that all of the differences and difficulties of India, combined with the everyday challenges of moving to any new place, will require a long period of acclimation. I wasn’t wholly willing to accept that at first. My fears about moving here manifested in my putting unreasonable pressure on myself to see things, do things, get settled, and most importantly like everything here. How naïve! My expectations were totally unreasonable and I’ve ended up in a pretty emotionally vulnerable position.

So I’m climbing back down and setting up base camps: our apartment, Priyadarshni park, the local bookshop, yoga class, Akanksha. I venture out from those places realizing that I can climb back down into their comfort for a few days at a time. Next I hope to build up some more relationships here that become sort of comfort zones—real friends outside of John and my own mind. I know I might not ever feel really comfortable during our stay here, but I hope that by paying attention to acclimation at least I’ll be able to breathe better.