It is common for us to experience events that make us question our worldview. Our understanding of the world is adapting over time as we experience life. I’ve had many times when I’ve revisited topics on this blog for that very reason, because when we re-explore a topic we deepen our understanding of Sikhi and walk away with a new framework of understanding.
When challenges occur, they may shake our faith in others, ourselves, or God. Sometimes, people cannot establish a new adaptive framework. Instead of being able to move past it, they start to view the world from a negative standpoint. We have talked about the importance of the “wall of doubt” in our posts in the past; this wall stands in between our minds being able to achieve their life goal of realizing it is one with Waheguru. It is like a small crack in the ice- once there is space for that doubt, it grows more and more if left unchallenged. From that doubt we develop really concrete black and white rules about the world- “don’t trust anyone”, “don’t be vulnerable”, “don’t give second chances”, or even “God has done wrong, God is bad.” I refuse to believe that these are the lessons we should be learning from life. People develop this framework because they are hurt, and there is an underlying fear of opening up themselves up to being hurt again. In her Netflix special, “The Call to Courage”, Brené Brown gives us an example of this. She goes swimming with her husband and while they are in the water, she tells him how much she loves connecting with him. This is not very typical for her and was really hard for her to say, but he doesn’t reciprocate. She tries again, and again he swims away. She is feeling shame, hurt, rejection, but reminds herself that her mind is just telling her a story. In the show she explains “our brain, which is wired to protect us above all else, wants a story.” She finally just expressed to him that the story she was telling herself was that he is rejecting me because of how I look in my swimsuit. He shared that he actually hadn’t heard her in the water because he was fending off a panic attack while swimming from a nightmare that he couldn’t save his kids from drowning. They were able to clear this up once they had a discussion, whereas they otherwise would have just argued and let it come out passive aggressively. She could have told herself the story that he doesn’t love her anymore for her looks, been too afraid to confront him about it because she didn’t want to be hurt again, and then just move on with her life with the negative viewpoint that her husband no longer loves her because she’s older. She was vulnerable in first telling her husband that she loved him, but also equally telling him she was hurt and checking her story, and it was that checking that repaired trust and corrected false assumptions. This is an example of positive adaptation.
I have a loved one that is ill and one of my relatives asked me- “tell me, why is this happening?” I think whenever we face a challenge in life, our most common question is why. We are looking for an explanation for some semblance of control, because if we can find a reason we can protect ourselves from it happening again. Someone might very well give us a reason- the reason for illness, the reason for someone being murdered, or simple things like the reason for being late. The explanation might not be satisfying enough to settle our minds because the event has already occurred and could not be changed. When we don’t have an explanation, or a satisfying one, we make up our own stories. Sometimes our story might involve blaming karma “this happened because of their bad karma”, black magic, pop psychology, bhoot (ghosts), or horoscopes. Ultimately these are all just a creation of maya. The 5 thieves have caught us once again, obsessing over why things are happening. I think the best explanation I ever got about why is from Bhai Satpal Singh from Nanak Naam, and he explained that it just is. Hukam is like a river that flows, it isn’t good and it isn’t bad, it just is. When people speak, or do something they are compelled to do so. It is up to us to use the chance we get by the grace of God, to recognize the maya, and break out of this cycle. The understanding of why also influences how we adapt to situations and whether we develop those negative widescale black and white viewpoints. If the Guru Ji’s had wanted us to learn not to trust anyone and to shut ourselves away, they would have written that into our Banis, and we would have become yogis in the mountains. Instead our Guru Ji’s taught us life lessons of being courageous, compassionate, and connected even when it is hard. This is a sign of our faith in God.
Brené’s research shows trust is made up of the components (BRAVING): honouring boundaries, being reliable (do what you said you would), accountable (apologize for mistakes), vault (hold in confidence what I share with you), integrity (practicing values), non-judgement (both come to each other for help), and generosity (I assume the best of your words, intentions or behaviours and will check in with you if something is bothering me). Through John Gottman’s research we know that trust is actually built in small moments. Brené has examples like building trust can be a person asking how a sick relative is, or remembering your parent’s names. These aren’t big things by any means but that is how trust is built. Gottman told a story of how he wanted to read a mystery novel, but saw that his wife is sad; he could have ignored her but he chose to approach her and that built trust. It would have been a betrayal to read his book, but betrayal is not the same as distrust. He explains distrust would have been if he thought he could do so much better than her and he should just leave her for someone else. It is universal to experience betrayal of trust in our lives. If we look at how it played out for Brené’s situation- she experienced the event, her trust in her relationship was shaken, didn’t want to be hurt again but she checked in to see what parts of trust were broken and approached with the story she was telling herself, eliminated her doubt and repaired the relationship. One of the other ways this could have gone would be that she didn’t want to be vulnerable, she could have just stuck to her story. Alternatively she could have approached her husband but still not been convinced of his explanation, or her attempts to repair the situation could have been futile.
| ALADDIN: "Do you trust me?" |
Brené describes how we can go through the acronym and try to understand which features need to be repaired. Which component of trust? We can also work on our own personal growth by asking ourselves- am I reliable, do I make generous assumptions of others? Since we all experience having trust broken, we know that we all have the experience of breaking someone else’s trust too so these are valuable for us all to work on. Maybe the attempt to repair some broken trust just wasn’t grand enough to fix things. Gottman actually studied this and found the quality of an attempt to repair a relationship doesn’t predict it being repaired- in other words it doesn’t really matter how big the repair action is in comparison to the break in the trust. He says for one person, a husband making a funny face might just patch up a relationship. Think of all the times you were mad and someone cracked a joke and it just changed the feeling of the room, made things light immediately. He described that the more important thing the emotional closeness established prior to the event that needs repair. Were people friends to one another in the past, did they trust initially? That’s where commitment to repair comes in too. I think if we look at Sikh Punjabis especially a lot of this stuff must have been intuitive to the generations before us because the divorce rate in our parent’s generation is so incredibly low. The process of repair after a betrayal and just finding ways to move through disagreements probably just came with knowing that you are with someone and neither of you is leaving (commitment, the opposite of distrust), so you might as well just fix it up as soon as you can. If minds are still stuck, people can work from a Sikhi point of view- doing simran together, sitting aand having faith in the guidance of a Hukamnama, trusting the Oneness that is in everyone. Trusting another is about making those generous assumptions, of seeing the best, seeing Waheguru in all and being loving but not caught in moh.
In this post we reviewed the topics of trusting people, ourselves, and God, and how challenges can lead us to positive or negative adaptations in our world-view. When we are caught up in our thoughts, fears, and doubts, we have fallen into maya and it is very hard to muster up the courage to get ourself out of the negative viewpoint. Courage is required for emotional battles as much as it is required for the physical ones fought by our ancestors. Let me be clear- it isn’t easy because that is the entire nature of this game of life. So when we say fight these emotional battles with simran, Naam, moving away from thoughts that divide us and into thoughts that unite us, we are really talking about our entire life purpose. The armor that protects us from being hurt in Sikhi comes with Naam, so while we engage and live in the world no matter what we are living in love, Anand, and peace.
References
John Gottman’s story of reading his mystery novel: How to Build Trust https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgWnadSi91s&t=9s
Gottman: Repairs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqPvgDYmJnY
Brené’s Anatomy of Trust talk: https://brenebrown.com/videos/anatomy-trust-video/
Picture: http://thetempestgirl.blogspot.com/2010/09/do-you-trust-me-what-we-can-learn-about.html
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