Understanding Privacy

Sulad Jhun Cardeinte
“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Luke 9:23

Entering among another cultural group is a challenge. Sometimes, the new lifestyle that is taking over our home-country's habitual life will become a threat to us. There will be a lot of adjustments to make, such as food, climate, forming new relationship, and etc. But one of the most challenging adjustments to make is adjusting to the new people around us.

One of this adjustment is tied up to personal privacy. By nature, we need a quiet environment, time we could spend alone, good and clean space to maintain the comfort and convenience. And when we are deprived from these may cause stresses and demoralization. Privacy is important. We loose our patient when someone invade our privacy and the result we couldn't function well. But what is the main reason why we claim privacy? Because we use to our home culture that we should have something we called ours and we reserved them for ourselves.

We say, “you are welcome, but only until here!” Is there any problem? Yes there is, because your home culture boundary may not be a boundary of other culture. This may cause misunderstanding and may hinder our relationship with the people we are working. One cannot say, you need to understand me because I’m a Filipino or I’m an American. A missionary cannot say “I don’t care” because he should care and must take the responsibility to understand and adjust. Let's face it. Establishing relationship to the people we are working is our responsibility.

Normally, what makes a missionary uncomfortable is when confronted by other strange situation which he feels not normal in his own lifestyle. He should understand the fact that our lifestyle is varied because of cultural, economical, educational, and geographic factors.

These factors made our ways to live greatly differs from others. If two persons with the same culture (both insiders) have misunderstanding, how much more to the person who is not of the same culture (between insider and outsiders).
Individually, there are personal matters we hate to share which we want to keep it confidential. This is how strong the influenced of civil rights in our life which shaped our being.

Education made us aware of the law protecting right and privacies, so that we normally start to claim our implied rights. But sad to say that not all people are educated and aware of rights we are enjoying in our homeland. Understanding other people's thinking of their privacy is one of the key to the door of success.