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Leave emotion aside: I think the teenager is way mistaken about finding happiness in Nepal Vs California.

It is just a matter of your perspective and how you are raised in the culture. We grow up listening to stories where the king wanders around to find the happiest person and finds a beggar as the best candidate. But think........, it's a Eastern philosophy. It is basically an implication that being poor=being happy and being rich is NOT. Well maybe the beggar has not seen anything beyond what he has in his life, does not know what's out there. Are all rich people unhappy? Are all the poor people happy? So the guy with the “hallo” plowing field would not prefer a tractor over his buffalo? Given the choice, everybody will reach for the better life. Just because we did not invent automobiles does NOT make us smarter than the person who did or happier in this case. Maybe they are happy that they can plow their field in few hours Vs spending weeks with the buffalo. How do you measure happiness? Just because we do not have running water, does that makes us happy? Ask the folks if they are happy with no water in Kathmandu, are they happy with load shading? Every civilization crawl towards modernization, why?---it makes life easier. Of course it has its won consequences.

Every human being has stress, the level varies. Poor village life is as stressful than city life in the West, in a different way. Since we do not have jobs and spend most of our time with family because we have no choice, it should not be mistaken for being happiness. Most family in Nepal live a very stressful life, for things like finances, family politics, land, social pressures etc etc. Our culture and our ways of our life has not been exposed to the rest of the world. And the few trekkers and the vacationers are not scholar or an expert in those social matters. Just imagine how stressful your family would be towards you, had you not left Nepal to some foreign country to make money to support them. Life is stressful, we're not immune to it simply because we live in village with no electricity. It's a part of human being's psychological existence, no matter where you live. Well at least the city dweller have bothered to explore the cause for it and found out a solution by relying on science-an anti depressant medicine. Like it or not-it helps some. It's better than doing nothing and complaining about it. Isn't it? Does that mean we're happier since we don't take medicine?

Please do not be mistaken there are no good, kind hearted people in California. There are plenty like those she met in Nepal.