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US woman shares 8 lessons from India that 'dismantled' her Western worldview: 'Permanently rewired how I see life'
A Harvard-trained psychologist has shared how a trip to India challenged her Western beliefs and reshaped her views on control, time, happiness and death.
A US-based psychologist has shared how her time in India reshaped her understanding of life, challenging Western ideas about control, time, happiness and mortality. Lorwen C Nagle, who trained at Harvard University, reflected on her experiences in a series of posts on X.
“I’m American. After my PhD, I went to India. What I experienced dismantled my Western worldview,” Nagle wrote, adding that the lessons she learned permanently rewired how she sees life.
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Rethinking time, happiness and spirituality
According to Nagle, one of the earliest insights came from a chaotic journey to Haridwar, where she was pushed onto a crowded bus and separated from her belongings. The experience forced her to confront what she described as the illusion of control. “Nothing was ‘mine’ anymore. Let go or suffer,” she wrote, describing it as a turning point in her mindset.
Her travels also prompted her to rethink the Western tendency to treat time as a commodity. She said that long train journeys across India felt “eternal” but gradually changed her relationship with time. “When time stops being a resource, it becomes a relationship,” she wrote.
Nagle also recalled a moment that stayed with her for more than 30 years: seeing a young man with severe disabilities smiling radiantly, which reinforced her belief that happiness is not dependent on circumstances but comes from within.
While visiting Vishwanath Gali in Varanasi, Nagle said that she observed a helpless cow being cared for daily by locals despite its condition. The scene led her to reflect on the spiritual dimension of suffering, writing that it reminded her people are “divinely held, whether we know it or not.”
In Rishikesh, crossing the Lakshman Jhula and stepping into the Ganges barefoot left a lasting impression. Unlike spaces in the US that she said are often designed for “speed, convenience, and consumption,” she described the environment in Rishikesh as one that encourages stillness and introspection. “Environments shape our consciousness,” she wrote.
Nagle also recounted attending the Palkhi Festival in Maharashtra, where she was among only a few Westerners in a crowd exceeding 50,000 people. Surrounded by jungle landscapes and wild monkeys, she described feeling that the boundaries between humans, nature and the collective had dissolved, leading her to conclude that “we are not separate.”
Another episode at the festival challenged her understanding of what is considered “normal”. After discarding an empty tuna can, she returned the next day to find locals gathered around it in curiosity. What was trash in the US, she realised, could be perceived very differently elsewhere. “Your reality isn’t universal,” she wrote.
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Confronting death
The most profound shift came during evenings spent at Manikarnika Ghat in Varanasi, where she watched cremations take place in the open. “Night after night, we watched skulls being broken and limbs fall from the fire. Nothing was concealed. Nothing was softened. Death wasn’t something to avoid. It was something to witness,” she wrote, adding that the experience made life itself feel more sacred.
