In the last few years I have been more committed to pursuing a creative passion, and as I have been reflecting on this, I have also been reflecting on how there wasn’t a lot of space for me to pursue this growing up. Having been raised in a culturally traditional family, the only viable options seen for my career was ‘lawyer, doctor, accountant’. Why? because I needed to be somebody. To make the sacrifices, challenges, traumas, and migration of my parents and grandparents (and ancestors) count. Financial stability was paramount, and of course, the status it would bring.
But the idea of status is not just a part of Indian culture. We could trace it’s roots back to the invention of class and race, where a few elite people keep the most, some people keep some, and a lot of people keep little or nothing. And that is not just in monetary terms, it also shows up in other ways.
I have began noticing this in particular with someone, where I share an experience or insight, and rather than receiving validation the person has to match me. Whether I share a healing experience I have gone through, they then will bring what they have been through and how they already reached that nugget of wisdom before me. Or perhaps I will share a meeting or learning with a person or teacher or mentor, they then have to either pursue that teacher after the conversation or ensure I know that they have a better or longer relationship with person. It is exhausting and I often walk away feeling unseen and invalidated by the conversation.
However underneath how I am left feeling, I truly recognise the wounding that is being acted out as I have also felt it (and most probably behaved the same way before). What I recognise in the need to match someone in this way is the desperate need to ‘be someone’. That craving of status. Mainstream society promotes this, even in the wellness industry, we are bombarded with marketing techniques - be someone! be unique! stand out! We live in a celebrity culture and don’t even get me started on the exoticism status of indigenous healers, teachers and lineages.
So why are some people trying to desperately be someone? Who are we trying to be? Why are we running away from ourselves? But more importantly - what if I am a nobody?
For so many years the Plant Kingdom made me feel special, they lifted my sense of self-worth off the floor. The Green Beings made me feel seen. Through the teachings of Guru Nanak Dev Ji that I was raised with, who taught about humility and service, it gave me a semblance of understanding that I am a nobody when it comes to being in service to the Creator and to Spirit. I am a seed in a large and ancient forest, young and full of potential, but in essence simply a seed amongst wise elders who have lived millions and millions of years longer than me.
So I am happy being a nobody, as it means I am not trying to be somebody, other than myself. In this sense of being content with being a nobody, just myself, comes the recognition that I am equally important as everyone else. Not more and not less. This in itself brings a state of balance, an energy of equality, where we can truly begin to see and accept one another for the individual that they are.