#13 - I don't need to understand my parents
#13 - I don't need to understand my parents
THANK YOU! DHANYAWAD! SHUKRIYA!
I hit 100 subscribers this week. You probably know this, but your first 100 supporters and believers are incredibly meaningful on the journey of any creation. They hold you through the trials, errors, and iterations; the figuring it out in real-time.
So I want to share how grateful I am for giving me your time, a sliver of your email box, sending me thoughtful messages and reflections on my writing, reading even if you’re not a subscriber, and reposting and sharing this tiny corner of the Inter-verse with others. I am starting to find more flow and ease in the writing, and am thinking about how this space can evolve and grow over the next weeks, months, and years. If you have any ideas, let me know. Much, much, love.
#soulwork
Yesterday I had the privilege of spending the day with artist/architect/spiritual teacher/philosopher, Javid Jah, on a series of field trips for the second episode of Desire Paths. I feel like I got private teaching from a brilliant and connected soul.
While at the Madinah Masjid on the Danforth, Javid read a scripture from the Quran that he hand painted1 inside the dome, which sits atop this place of worship, using the ancient tradition and practice of sacred geometry. In the first part of the scripture, there is an invitation to contemplate the difference between sleep and slumber. I am curious what you think. Drop your reflections in the comments.
I am currently sitting in my sister’s old bedroom at my parent’s house in Markham. Downstairs, my parents are listening to their Guru give a lecture over Zoom at the highest volume, while drinking their third cup of chai; their daily routine from 8-10pm. Aside from His voice, the house and maze of streets nuzzled around us, are silent. There are no cars or streetcars, no one passing by yowling into their AirPods, no faint sounds of music or guitar practice, no garbage bin covers being banged or scrimmaged, and no trace of air travel. Once an hour, I hear the wind smack against the window, like a whirling dervish in a trance who lost their balance, only to immediately carousel back into sequence.
This room is a museum, not a national one of stolen goods parading colonialism, but like one of those niche ones on the Hollywood strip that end up on an ‘off-beat things to do in LA,’ travel list that you wonder who actually goes to2. In the 96 hours I have been here, in this room, on this bed, sleeping, working, zooming, crying, and eating, I have named this room museum ‘things that end up on walls from university poster sales.’ To the right of me is a 10x15 poster of a generic sunrise, flanked beside an Andy Warhol quote that reads ‘I don’t know where the artificial stops and the real starts,’ that sits above an 8x11 black and red poster that suggests to ‘Be Original.’ To the left of me is a 20x15 poster that has 'Peter’s Laws: The Creed of the Sociopathic Obsessive Compulsive.’ And directly above me is a vertical instruction guide to life by the Dalai Lama. There are more, but you’ll have to buy a ticket to see the collection.
I have no idea how to corroborate this poster aesthetic into a personality assessment of my sister, but seriously, isn’t it amazing how long a thumbtack can hold up a piece of paper? These have all easily been here for over a decade, which is no surprise because very little has changed in this house since we moved here in 2003, after a 19-year stint in Scarborough. Sure, the bathrooms have been completely redone, now with rain showers, and the kitchen was completely gutted, but the rhythm of this house is the same. And that is comfortable in a way that is giving me so much angst; where you know yourself to have evolved, healed, but find yourself thrust and tested into older patterns. How does it happen so quickly? Muscle memory must extend to object memory, embedded in the sheets, the path of wood flooring from this room to the kitchen, and where you dry your towel, falling into a robotic version of yourself a decade prior.
Over the years, I have learned that the only way I have been able to evolve my relationship with my parents is to leave their house. We like each other more in other spaces, where there is room to disrupt the daily schedule with games, deep questions, and inquiries about my ancestors from left field. Where there is no muscle or object memory to lean on. At their house, we’re entangled in a 36-year history of fighting over whether you should wash the pots and pans while you’re cooking or after you’re done cooking.
I’ve barely spoken since I’ve been here, noticing my teenage proclivities to withdraw resurface because back then sharing information felt too risky and could mean either a cruel response or ammunition in a future unknown and unrelated conversation. Becoming relatively mute and shrugging was as much a common teenage gesture as it was a safety strategy. The body certainly keeps score.
I have done a tremendous amount of healing from years of our tumultuous relationship, entwined so deeply in intergenerational, patriarchal, religious, class, education, and cultural fractures that made it hard if not impossible to understand each other, let alone see and love each other. I remember waking up one morning and physically feeling my tightly held anger reserved strictly for them gone from my body. I couldn’t believe it. Healing works! It really works!
Parts of that healing were facilitated by not living together anymore, which gave us the space we needed to simply be ourselves on our own terms. We’ve spent a lot of time judging each other’s life choices, which sows pretty rotten soil to grow any semblance of a nourishing relationship. They definitely still judge me for living with my partner before marriage and being 36 without children and a mortgage, cause you know, cultural programming runs deep, but truly I rarely judge them anymore. I have accepted I will never understand them, and I do this to honor their own sovereign complex lives and souls outside of simply being my parents. I do this to nurture my humility in not possibly being able to understand being one of seven children, losing a parent at a young age and having to drop out of school to help with the bills, moving to a new country with no job or Internet, being financially dependant on a partner, and living in a time where the patriarchy was as strong in some South Asians, as it was being unveiled in culture.
It’s not always an easy experience. Sometimes (like earlier today) I want to yell WHY I DON’T GET IT from the top of the stairs so loudly it cracks the skylight window, but herein lies the work. Resolution is a desire of the rational mind; whereas all spiritual work and truth is rooted in greater comfort with paradox3. Grow where you are planted, they say! I’m here for at least another week, so hopefully, I can earn a branch and not lose one.
Bon weekend + see you next week,
Hima
Hand painting for 1,000 hours (!)
I went to the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles on account of one of these lists
As said by Reverand Angel Kyodo Williams