There are two things that our Nepali parents have given to us when we were children: roots and wings.

The roots that we got from our parents when we received our sense of identity, history, ethnicity, who we are.
The wings we got from our parents when they facilitated our career, flexibility for new opportunities, adaptability, etc.

But sometimes, I feel that the roots and the wings can come into conflict. I felt that this is what we were discussing in the thread below. In this thread, I asked the question, 'Is America heaven or prison for us Nepalese' and I got a lot of responses from different sajhaites that made me re-think my point of view.

http://www.sajha.com/sajha/html/OpenThread.cfm?forum=2&ThreadID=84578#788268

I feel I see some things in a light that I had not before. One of the things that came up over and over in the above conversation was that people were saying, 'whether our stay in America is heaven or prison is in our hands.' Some sajhaites were saying that we can make our stay in America what we want it to be. Others were saying that we may not be able to be 'pure Nepalis living in America' (whatever that means). But rather we need to be a more hybrid-version of Nepalis. Nepalis who get their motivation and identity from many different places instead of just one sense of 'Nepaliness.'

And as much I intellectually understood what you were saying, emotionally I had a harder time accepting. In that sense, I feel like I am stuck in an emotional rut. Intellectually I understand America decently, I feel. But emotionally I find that my heart is still quite Nepali (again, whatever that means). My values standards are still programmed according to how it was programmed growing up in Kathmandu. I instinctively return back to this programming...as much as I have intellectually tried to run away from it.

Truth be told, in America, in some ways, in the name of freedom of speech I feel there are too many ideas, opinions, life styles, etc. Living in America, it feels sometimes that if you open yourself up to the sea of ideas and opinions, that it is easy to get over-whelmed and lost in the sea of contradictory ideas and thinking. (Some of this is embarrasing to talk about in public. But, in the anonymity and privacy of this forum I feel somewhat comfortable to talk about.) When I open myself to all the different American media, I sometimes feel  confusion and a loss of identity pulling at me from all angles of the chaos of opinions. That is when I feel the need to hold tightly unto my 'Nepaliness.'

That is when, for example, I feel that according to my identity as a Nepali, as a male, as someone from a certain socio-economic status, based on a certain age, I have a very narrow idea of who I am and what I  should be doing with my life. Instinctively, I feel that any accomplishments outside of that narrow perspective is not acceptable.  I tend to judge myself and other Nepalis I meet along similar standards.

I try to be open minded but I find myself very much inclined to going back to the 'social programming' I received in Kathmandu during my formative years. This way of thinking just comes from my gut and feels instinctively raw and right. So on one hand I am trying to adapt to the new opportunities in America. On the other hand I am struggling with changing my 'old programming' from Kathmandu without losing my Nepali identity.