Dear Varun,
I’m lying in bed, the last day of 2023, wishing I could sleep but instead being constantly woken up by these fireworks. You and baby are in the next room and every time I hear an explosion, I worry that he will be woken up but luckily your strategy of holding him in top of you plus the hatch is proving effective. So instead of fighting against the noise, I thought I would write you a letter.
I’ve never been much for resolutions. It seemed silly to make goals just because it is a new year as opposed to making it a practice of our day to day lives but reading everyone’s takeaways from this year made me reflect on my own year. It’s hard for me to remember everything that happened this year – my memory is not the greatest as you know and everything kind of just melts into one – but I do know this year has been a definable one for us. Bringing Vishvashanti into this world and as part of our lives has forever changed our future. We exist as a threesome now and there’s no decision that we will ever make in which we will not also consider how it will affect him.
Towards that end, I’ve been thinking a lot about that Montessori post that we saw earlier today. One of the “goals” or resolutions in that post was “prepare yourself more than you prepare the environment.” This is what it said:
“Dealing with our trauma and expectations, becoming a role model for our children, fulfilling our potential, will help us be a better parent.”
Of course these things are important to think about and work on even if you are not a parent but being a parent suddenly puts it in sharp relief. Like I really need to work on my stuff because it is sending a message to my child whether I’m conscious of it or not. I may not be able to fix everything but actively and attentively working on it models that behavior to my child and encourages them to do the same.
So what am I trying to work on to be better for Vishva? I think something I have been really trying to be better about is how I look at and think about my body. It’s definitely not at 100% but when I look in the mirror, I’ve been trying to find something to be positive about, compliment myself on, rather than only zooming in on the negative. Sometimes it’s something really dumb – “the color of this shirt is pretty” for example – but I’m hoping it will lead to a bigger shift. This includes how I think about food. I want to enjoy food and think about the variety of textures, flavors, and colors. I don’t want to divide them into “good” and “bad” and then start making moral judgments about people who eat particular kinds of food. Although this has never been that huge of a problem for me, hearing other people talk about food in this way has really made me sensitive to how much we do this and how important it is to actively work against it. I am practicing not commenting on anyone’s food choices or their bodies. When I think something about either that may be judgey, I’m trying to pay attention to the origin of that thought and take the time to intentionally refuse it. I hope this will help me to be both kinder to others and to myself. As Vishva gets older, I imagine this will become harder as I will have to intercept the harmful conversations people around us get into but I hope practicing this from now will help me later.
When I think back over the year, I think of how much I have grown intellectually. I’ve been exposed to so many new ideas this year and it has really helped to challenge my ideas and worldview. I really hope to have the chance to keep pushing myself this year. I’m grateful for our friends and my students who have helped me think differently. It’s also helped me really appreciate the community we have created. We are so lucky. I know that we don’t have a lot of people who live right next to us and it will take a lot of effort on our part of make sure that we continue these relationships, but I’m so so happy about the people who are in our lives. They are all kind and thoughtful people and exactly that kind of people that I want Vishva to be exposed to. I guess that’s one of the things I have really realized this year – community is created. It isn’t just the people in your immediate surroundings. You have to actively construct and shape it and sometimes it can mean that the people themselves are very far but…
[quick break to make sure I was cuddling you to start the new year]
that’s okay. In fact, maybe that’s been one problem with our (in the universal way) understanding of community thus far. Yes, it is about those in our immediate surroundings but it is also expansive. I’m not just talking about the “global community,” whatever that means, but all the connections we make near and far of people who are playing an important role in helping us develop into the kind of people that we want to be.
I guess the last thing I want to mention here is something that I wanted to make a whole post about but part of this post will have to suffice. Ever since Chris introduce the topic of political prisoners into the classroom and made that comment about us needing to really think more seriously about the role of violence, I’ve been doing just that. Productive violence is not something that I think we are accustomed to thinking about. In fact, I think we have been trained to be resistant to this idea. I wish I had something more to say here but all I can really think about is the war in Gaza right now, the cruelty Dalits face, BLM, prison lockdowns, and all the ways in which violence is used against people while we uphold nonviolence on a pedestal of morality. Is this really serving us? Not that I want to harm anyone. That’s the thing right? I don’t actually want to hurt anyone but my life has not been marked by violence in the ways so many people have so I can shudder at the thought of committing violence and perhaps even judge those who consider it. But I wonder. I’ve just been sitting with Chris’ comment/question in my head. What is the role of violence? It is insufficient to say that violence begets violence because time and time again it has been proven that nonviolent action doesn’t actually result in nonviolence. For the first time in my life, I’m really thinking about the very practical point the Gita might be making. I mean this in a very big picture way but I often ask my class, does the Gita promote violence, how have many people interpretated it in a way that actually makes it about nonviolence. But now I wonder. What if it is actually just saying, “fools, violence is necessary and inescapable.” Point blank. Forget all the justifications for it later, about karma blah, blah. I’m not interested in all the details of the story at the moment but just about this very particular point. It’s justification of violence as what is just. Perhaps I have done a disservice to the text and to myself by not taking this seriously enough?
What do you think about this all? In particular this last point about violence but also what are your biggest takeaways from this year? Anything you are purposefully working on this upcoming year?
I should sleep, but I don’t want to end without mentioning that this year in particular I am feeling especially lucky and privileged to have you by my side. At the stroke of midnight, all I could think about was how Andel is bringing in this new year without his wife and instead is traveling to Trinidad to arrange her funeral. I can’t imagine the pain that he must be in. And of course, all of those suffering in the war right now. What does it even mean to talk about the new year and the hopes and dreams one has for it as you are watching your family and friends die? All it is is luck that we are both standing here, healthy and strong, and I am so, so thankful. You mean the world to me Varun. Thank you for being my partner, Vishvashanti’s dad, and my best friend. I love you so much. Happy New Year 2024, my love.
Yours Always,
Prea