Unsettled

I’ve learned the depths of empathy and compassion through my life and got used to seeing things from different points of view. There is always a story. We can be compassionate towards those who spend their lives in maya, who are lost, because we remind ourselves that they have wasted away their purpose in this life and will have to live through this again, they must reap what they sow. We cannot define people by their story in this life, because it is the story of many lifetimes, of the mind travelling as it learns. Why do we strip people of their humanity and define them by one moment? Guru Nanak Dev Ji gave people like Sajjan Thug and Kauda Rakshish new lives. The times that our judgement comes into play is when our ego rises up from inside us. We judge because we feel vulnerable, attacked, insulted.   

It is difficult to share our stories, to have hard and real conversations. Yet when we do, I have noticed much resistance. I think people feel uncomfortable hearing our stories because it unsettles their own. Imagine a suitcase that is overfilled, and you have barely just fit everything in, and you have to sit on it to get it to close. Some people’s lives have this box inside that they have barely kept everything in, and your story threatens that box opening, it threatens the way that they live day in and day out. My very existence through my story may threaten someone’s current way of living. Being with people when they are real is hard because it can open up feelings of discomfort within yourself. Someone else’s realizations about life can challenge your worldview, how you operate and think and move through the world. It can make people gain faith or lose it entirely. In some way, speaking our truth can liberate us and isolate us all at once if no one else wants to hear it. Many people have had to walk that path, but I think it’s better to be real and have a relationship with God than be fake and have everyone. We like to protect other people from the pain of our stories, but they need to be said. The stories of our families need to be told, the stories of Sikhs migrating in 47 and the stories of our shaheeds, the stories of Sikhs before us, all these truths need to be told. Some people don’t stick around to hear it. Others can only listen to a story by calling you “another.” By seeing people as “others” we separate them out. It is a way of convincing ourselves to retain our worldview in the face of something that challenges it. It is a way of saying this happened to you, because of factors that are unique to you, and this could never possibly happen to me. It preserves the self as we know it and prevents us from truly absorbing other people’s stories and the reality of the world, that any one of us can be living on the streets, any one of us can be addicted, any one of us can be murdered or sexually assaulted, any one of us can be anywhere, in any position because there is actually no “other” in the first place. This is what Sikhi teaches us- the other doesn't exist. 

I hear stories day in and day out. They make me squirm in my seat sometimes or my heart pound and my stomach churn. No matter what, it is absolutely essential to be a witness to someone’s story, and a privilege to do so. Broken hearts that are unseen die, they might die physically or they might die away of the life they could have had, living in a shell of what they were. Listening, I am challenged in the fairness and justice of the world. I am challenged in my perceptions of right and wrong, in my ideas of even how things exist and how things are. It is hard to understand the poison that makes violence possible, that turns love into indifference, and pulls away smiles into misery, one drop of which violates the purest of waters, yet it exists in all of us. It is ego, it is maya. As the discomfort has changed into growth after hearing stories, and I find myself transformed, I have leaned into seeking out stories. I seek them out in biographies, audiobooks, documentaries, and articles. I want depth to life, not a rigid set of rules that doesn’t change. The only way we can hold space for these stories is really if we allow that part of ourselves to get unsettled, to do so. To address what is going on inside, because without that we will not be able to be present for anything, not for our loved ones, not for anyone. 

Think about the most transformative stories. Whose story did you hear and how did it change you?