sabh mehi joth joth hai soe
|| this dhai chaanan sabh mehi chaanan hoe ||
Amongst all is the
Light-You are that Light. By this Illumination, that Light is radiant within
all.
As
a child, I would listen to my mother recite these lines at night, drifting into
sleep to the soothing sound of Sohila.
These words didn’t mean much to me then, but the older I got, and the more I
tried to understand and implement the Guru’s bani in my life, the more these lines became imprinted in my mind.
I found them so profound—profound in a way that I was unable to reach them. I
had grown up embracing the concepts of love and equality that Sikhi embodied,
but at many times in my life, I could not make sense of the belief that
Waheguru was in everyone. When my city, my home, was shaken to the core by the
horrific tragedy of 9/11, I could not see how God was in the people who were
responsible. In all the hate crimes that followed, I could not see God in the
perpetrators. When I worked with survivors of domestic violence, trying to help
them piece their lives back together, I was convinced that God could never be
in their abusers. I put up a wall to protect them, and I used the same wall to
divide those that I encountered in my life into “good” and “bad.” And then one
day, I went on an interview that changed everything.
My supervisor looked at my resume
and back up at me. “All the work you’ve done is with victims.” Because they were the ones who deserved it
most, I thought to myself. “If you get into this clinic, you’re going to have
to represent criminal defendants, people with criminal convictions. Are you ok
with that?” It was a simple question. At the moment, I responded with an “of
course,” but later that day, I kept thinking about whether I would be able to
handle venturing out to the other side of my wall. I ended up being offered a
position in the clinic, and I took it, and today, I can say that I’ve never
been more grateful for an opportunity in my life.
After working with clients with
criminal convictions, I’ve come to break down the wall I had built up. I’ve
come to the very important realization that people are not inherently bad. Yes,
sometimes people do horrible things, but that doesn’t make them horrible
people. And I’ve been fortunate to be able to see that divine light in my
clients, who have been defined in our society’s vision by the bad things
they’ve done, rather than the progress they’ve made since; their goodness has
been overshadowed by their mistakes. But at the end of the day, they are just
as human as the rest of us. And being able to be the one person who they can
turn to and trust with their livelihood, to be the one person who will not look
upon them with disappointment, fear, or hatred, as the rest of the world does,
and to be the one person that will help them – to me, this has been the most
humbling experience ever.
This experience is only one of many
that have reminded me of what it means to be a Sikh – to forever be learning.
And so entering this new year, my resolution is to find the good in everyone
around me, to learn to see Waheguru’s divine light in all of humanity, and to
question myself every time I pass judgment on someone. As humans, we are all
flawed; our flaws are the very essence of what makes us human, and as victims
of human nature, we are all equally capable of bad judgments and mistakes. But
these mistakes are not the summation of who we are as people. And we should
hope that the rest of the world looks upon us the way we should look upon them –
through Waheguru’s loving eyes.
Here’s
to another wonderful year of learning.
