Death and other certainties

As the preacher spoke, delivering his message of devotion enrobed in fear and guilt, I couldn't help but remain where I stood. I was at a funeral after all. He told a story like many I had heard before about someone who had come to realize that fearing death was essential to living a religious life. He spoke about the need for the fear of death to consistently remind us to stay attached to the One. Then he went on to speak about how we are all ticking time bombs that could go off at any moment, leading to our eventual demise. I did not connect with the words of this preacher. He spoke of death with such incredibly negative connotations. I wanted to say something to him, similar to these words spoken below:

Of course, I didn't. Instead, I tried to understand what it was about his message that made me feel so detached. Very simply, it was the idea of living a life in fear and living a life in which our actions and behaviours are motivated and driven by fear. There is no arguing against fear being a strong motivator. It's an emotion that gets things done - exams, projects, presentations, event planning. It just doesn't feel like the healthiest motivator. And what really bugged me was the preaching of this type of a lifestyle and its forced association with spirituality. Any faint glimpses of spirituality that I've ever had seem to come from a place that's polar opposite to fear. Rather, these instances seem to be related to feelings of deep appreciation and gratefulness. I guess this is how I feel about death - death should not serve as a source of fear to drive life but rather as a reminder to be grateful for the life we are so lucky to have.

Coming home

She said there was nothing here for her.

She saw no beauty in the relentless backdrop of mountain peaks.

She refused to hear the inflections or rhythms in the rainfall pulsing among the lamplit streets.

She chose not to feel the warmth of the sun on its rare visits

Nor ponder the possibilities in the clouds.

She preferred to live in her candy floss facade of a world.

A world of shopping malls and designer bags,

Pop radio and international fads.

Of mass-produced chocolate and high-fructose corn syrup treats.

She ignored my breaths and all my racing beats.

But there are entire worlds to discover in the most unassuming pockets of this place.

From records stores to hidden parks.

From cherry blossoms to intimate coffee spots.

From spoken word in restaurant basements to music gigs in random pub placements.

So she left, I stayed.

I rediscovered the city streets, on my own this time.

They seemed renewed without her fitted views.

I listened

To the gently increasing volume of droplets falling from the sky.

To the melodic notes of rusty acoustic guitars strumming on the streets.

And I sang along

With all my strength down to my bones

Right there with strangers on a bench.

I screamed familiar tunes at the top of my lungs until my voice gave out

And then just kept on singing

Until I stumbled my way back to a place that I should never have stopped calling home.

Remembering my roots

That look.

I'll never forget that look.

It was the summer after high school graduation and I was working in the recycling department of the local Pepsi factory. The same factory that my dad ji had worked at for many years. During a night shift, I had just jumped off my little orange electric forklift and was unloading a few damaged Crush rainbow packs onto a pallet. Though I had seen my dad ride by on his big yellow propane-powered forklift a number of times in the prior weeks, this time was different. He would occasionally just check in to see if things were going well and at times give me a few pointers. But this time, among the forklift honks and the machinery beeps bouncing off the towers of colourfully-labelled plastic bottles and aluminum cans, I didn't hear him come by.

But when I glanced up and saw him seated in his forklift, gently observing me, I saw this look. This look of real pride and a sort of deep-rooted joy. Our eyes only met for a moment, he smiled, and then drove by.

That look. I don't think I've ever seen quite that same look again. Nor do I expect to. And it's not for a lack of accomplishments or moments of joy, but it's because that single moment had this uniqueness to it, as did his look - seeing his kid working the job he grew up doing.

It reminds me of this story my cousin told me about his good friend - this friend who had journeyed off to Dublin to study medicine. As the school breaks took place during the summers in between terms, these were the intervals he would return home. But instead of getting a position in a research laboratory or a clinical setting, he would spend every summer working at this one grocery store for minimum wage. While others made attempts to get positions at places that would add to their CVs and hopefully their passions, he returned every summer to work at that same grocery store, stocking shelves and bagging items. When my cousin asked him why, he gave a very simple response. He plainly said 

it's where my parents came from. They worked hard to give me my future. I need to go through that as well. Not for the money, but to be an everyday person and to remember my roots.

And so it begins...

I was in Grade 9 when it happened. It was a normal afternoon at school and I was sitting in Social Studies, my last class for the day. Mr. Foster, as per usual, was going through current events in a way only he did. He would stand up in front of the class behind this aged wooden podium and just casually ask

so what's new?

He was the kind of person who would care for you deeply, but would never state it explicitly. His caring and his love showed through the way he challenged us, continually pushing our comfort zones. For all the years I knew him, I remember he always had the same two posters neatly pinned to the wall by his desk - one poster with the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven too small to read across the room and the other of the Montreal Canadiens logo with all the years they had earned Lord Stanley's Cup printed below.

So it was at some point in the middle of Mr. Foster putting one of us on the spot to comment on the repercussions of The Troubles on Northern Ireland, that my mind gradually began to race. Well it actually started off as more of a light jog, but its intensity kept climbing.

When the clock quietly flicked on exactly at 3:11 - yeah we didn't have bells at our school, we had televisions that hung from the classroom corners, weird I know - I threw my army-green Five-Star binder into my backpack and just walked straight out the classroom door, turned right, and pushed through the painted steel exit doors towards the sunshine.

The thoughts in my mind kept accelerating as I walked. Upon reaching home, I remember hugging my thadi ji and then going straight to my room, dropping my backpack while closing the door, and just sitting with my legs crossed on my bed. I just sat and gazed right into my bookshelf - which back then held more novelties than it did novels - and tried to catch up with my thoughts.

For the first time, I could feel myself becoming aware of the life that I was living. I could no longer absentmindedly just soar along, my feet were about to touch the ground. All at once, I was roughly jerked from automatic to manual transmission - and not only was I unaware of where the clutch was, I didn't even know there was one.

So that's it.

That was the pinpointed moment when everything altered. I guess it was at that specific moment while attempting to comprehend my racing mind that I somehow became truly aware of myself. I became aware of the fact that I was in control of my body's limbs and of each of the words that I shaped with my mouth and of each of the emotions with which I could choose to react. I'm still not sure what exactly happened that afternoon. All I know is that I can't really recall how exactly I used to perceive life before that day.

While normally I've always known growth to occur gradually over time, usually not even realizing the changes until looking back, this is the one moment of my life when something just clicked. And unlike switching on today's compact fluorescent light bulbs that lazily awaken, this enlightening happened in the way of the old-fashioned incandescent bulbs - all at once.