Gentle

 “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” —Rumi

As I washed my hair in the shower today, I reminded myself to be kind, gentle and loving the same way I am with other people. I thought of my Massis and Buas, and the women in my life, how self-sacrificing they are. I thought of how they give and give, until they wilt into the definitions of their roles- who they care for, what they do, what they contribute. I thought about the thousands of women who trained like me, who relate to this feeling of sacrifice. We spent our young years sitting at desks studying instead of outside living. To paraphrase one of the women, we couldn’t eat, or sleep, or go to the bathroom when we needed because this is what survival was in our training. 10 years of delayed gratification and we are stuck in a role of continually sacrificing. It’s not a matter of whether you are a working woman, a homemaker, of what roles you play, there is something wrong here. 

 

I think back to my 16 year old self, that confident girl, who knew how much spark there was inside her, how talented she was. In the years that have passed, I have added depth, dimension, and colour to her. Yet I have eroded so much of my core being that I can no longer enjoy her flavour. Sacrifice is huge in our Sikh history. It is a theme that we teach our children- to be compassionate, empathetic, to give to humanity, because they are your own. We teach them to love and care for others, and to be like all the amazing shaheeds in our history. To be like those Singhniya who endured so much hardship and still were in chardi kala. We teach our children to be strong. I got here by teaching my mind to have faith and to be flexible, to be understanding, to put myself in other people’s shoes, and to get where they are coming from. If I had to give part of my life up to my profession, I gladly gave it because that was what was needed, because we are givers, we are healers, we are ones who came here to serve other people. As much as sacrifice is an important concept though, there is something wrong with this overall picture. This cannot be the right way to teach our Sikh, or Punjabi girls, our women, to give everything of themselves away until there is nothing left. It is natural to want to feed and nurture others, but we can’t get anywhere if we can’t be nurturing to ourselves. I am struggling to think of TV shows of women from India nurturing themselves even, they always seem to play the same role. I am realizing there is a difference in understanding other perspectives and doing it at the expense of invalidating your own voice. 

 

I think back to our history. We aren’t describing people with low-self esteem, or who lacked confidence. None of our famous Sikhs are described as what I am describing here. Instead, they had this universal loving energy, that came from a strong sense of core being. They had an abundant joy to give that came from respecting and loving oneself equal to others. Megan Logan writes in her Self-Love Workbook for women, “For women, nurturing has its roots in survival. In early hunting and gathering societies, women’s activities centered around bearing and rearing children, gathering food and drink, and creating a safe home space. Today, as women, we often find ourselves taking care of our children, our parents, our friends, our lovers. We extend grace and compassion toward others so easily, yet we often struggle to make space and time to put ourselves first.” Rumi’s quote at the top of this post comes back to the concept that love is the universal life energy, it is Waheguru. It is our natural state for us to love ourselves, and to love others, but we have been burdened by maya to create a doubt in that. 

I think we should encourage a different message to ourselves, and over time those will be the messages that our girls and young women will pick up, that they are enough in themselves, that their feelings are valid, that they are whole and complete on their own. I think we are working on the messages of creating independence in young women but we still push the message of self-sacrifice and those are conflicting values. We can sacrifice without giving away all of our selves, because when we give all of us, we cannot sustain it. It comes from a finite pool. When it comes from the universal energy of God, it is an infinite pool. Uplifting each other, other Kaurs, means helping to make sure that we support each other in taking care of ourselves- whether that is our physical, mental, or spiritual health. That means reminding each other you don’t need to do everything right away. Take a moment when you get home to eat something before moving on with household chores, or putting away the groceries. Emails can be answered later, you need to sleep now. Encouraging each other in taking moments of rest, in moments of self-care, in moments of enjoying ourselves, our hobbies, the things that we love instead of suffocating each other with more expectations. It is found in loving and validating each other so that over time we learn to love and validate ourselves and see that we do matter just as much as other people. That inner child needs to learn to put herself first.