Columnists

Exploring The Self

by I.J. SINGH

A friend, of Jewish heritage and now in her mid-forties, is becoming a Sikh.  She did not come to Sikhi through Yogi Harbhajan Singh, or a similar introduction.  So she doesn't have the infrastructure of community support that, for example, Yogi Bhajan's followers benefit from. She wonders, sometimes, how the community around her will perceive her after her formal initiation into Sikhism. 

Too many Sikhs, she is concerned, might not accept her fully, simply because she is not a product of the Punjabi Sikh culture; she would always remain somewhat of an outsider.  To many non-Sikhs, also, she might appear an enigma who has embraced what is to them   a "little known, alien way" of life.

I saw what she was getting at and we circled the issue several times without gaining much insight or progress, until it dawned on me that such a riddle is not so uncommon.  There are two components to the sense of self: How we view ourselves and how others see us.  Both are important.

Let me start this conversation the easy way -  by my own example, which is clearly not unique to me.  Having spent over two-thirds of my life in the United States, I know that I am not the Indian that I was when I came here.  But how much of an American am I?  My Indian friends often pick upon my quirks to remind me that I am now very Americanized in many ways.  But my American associates, in jest or annoyance, often point to my many Indian traits or behavior patterns.  I like to think that they are both right.  (I just hope and pray that I have adopted the best of both cultures and not the worst.)

Yes, I am American enough to have first voted in a presidential election over 36 years ago.  I relate to American humor well enough to usually laugh at the right lines, while some Indian and Punjabi humor sometimes escapes me.  But then, so do some nuances of humor or folk music derived from the many cultural enclaves of America.  I remember being confused by lyrics of a song, "Bye Bye, Miss American Pie; drove my Chevy to the levee and the levee was dry..." This was before I understood the all-consuming love affair between the American male and his car. 

Sometimes, even after so many years, when I enter a room to lecture to strangers, I can see in their eyes the question, not so much of my competence, but of my ability to connect with them.  I find then, that in New York, some jokes delivered in passable Brooklynese, laced with some Yiddishisms, are sufficient to establish my credentials.

I am sure readers can provide more telling examples from their own lives.  The point is that my friend's concern about how well others accept her or respond to her as a Sikh is not unique to her.  Not so many years ago, American culture could not see women in any roles other than mother, wife, schoolteacher, nurse or secretary.  Now we are toying with the idea that one might even become the president.

Much depends on how comfortable we are with the choices that life offers us, or those we have made for ourselves.  Before we can live with others  -  and respond to how they view us  -  we have to be comfortable with the one person that we have to live with  - ourselves, in our very own skins.

If I cannot accept myself, I doubt if anyone else would.  I find that no matter what I appear to be, some people will accept me, and some never will.  For some, I will always remain too short or too tall, too fat or too thin, too light or too dark, too rich or too poor, and so on, ad nauseum et infinitum.

A few may question my friend's claims to being a Sikh because she will never look like the traditional Punjabi Sikh, just as there'll always be some people who will continue to exclude those who look like me because we do not fall within their concept of an American. 

If Sikhi is a universal philosophy, it must speak to me as freely in New York or Timbuktu, as it would in Punjab.  If it is eternal, it should talk to me here and now while I live my mixed-up life in New York today, as it did to my ancestors in a different world and a different time.

I would ask my friend to take courage and keep the faith. To seek the validation of others is to merely create a self-imposed and unnecessary psychological burden on oneself.

Sikhi is a belief system for a way of life, not a way to define race, color or nationality.

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