Reconnecting With Roots

With all the hustle bustle and responsibilities of our busy lives, many of us have lost the ability to see the joy and wonder in the world around us and to feel connected with it.

Often our lives drift aimlessly like a boat in the rough sea and we run a life of frustrations and despair. The inner self craves for reconnecting with our roots but mental boundaries often act barriers in evolving. Little do we realize that life without family reconnection is just like a fish out of water? I still fondly remember how as a child my parents carried me along to marriages and social events, where one meets all relatives. The acceptance and love we give to others comes back to us tenfold.

Today the growing individualism, social comparisons, outperforming each other, and discontentment has made it difficult for us to integrate attitudes, feelings, and thoughts with the value systems and fellow feelings. The nuclear family system is slowly distancing us from our roots. As a mute spectator we witness how relationships are shifting from 'care and share' to 'give and take'. People forget that honest family relationships are an integral part of human system.

When we lovingly and mindfully reconnect with our roots, we simultaneously strengthen our love for ourselves, and our interpersonal relationships become more joyous.

Sometimes, painful memories encourage us to disconnect from our personal histories, and sometimes, we just get caught up in the present. The suffering and the disappointments we experienced in the past lead us to disconnect with people and stay in our shell, just to avoid getting hurt again, we lock our emotions and self expression in one of the corners of our heart and become more like a machine. Much of it lies completely unprocessed in our store consciousness. One needs to revisit it and heal it, so that in our present, the life can be complete and more fulfilling. It is like reclaiming a long forgotten part of our own self. Reclaiming one’s true self.

We can choose to ignore or forget our family heritage, but at what price? Not only does it provide each of us with pride and history, but also it helps us to be grounded, living a life which is happy, peaceful, loving, and fulfilled. So take pride and take the time to reconnect to your roots. How to start? Ask your parents, uncles, aunts, and cousins for leads that will allow you to locate distant family members. Then make an introductory contact, probably with a letter. Find out if they have e-mail. Exchange photos. Let it progress naturally. Will a phone call be next? Then a visit?

Last whole year was a year of reconnection for me. I got some new assignments for Amritsar city, and I was overwhelmed number one as I had never visited Amritsar before and secondly more as it was the birth town of my father, little did I know till then, what was reconnecting to my roots. I have visited many places not only in India but all over the world, but trust me visit to Amritsar was above all of them. The air felt so much more cozier and warmer, the smell of the earth and people were much as if my own, altogether I don’t have words to put it, but it was unique which I never felt before, although I was alone in a new city but it felt like my extended home. And this is the feeling of reconnection, the food there tasted like the one cooked by my grandmother, I felt once again reconnected to her, a great feeling. She had expired some 18 years back, and we were not at her side during her last days, although I had spent an entire childhood with her. Similarly each one of us has some missing link with our roots, which can only be connected once you revisit.

Another memorable incident which I remember in one of my visits to Amritsar, I had to give a presentation to local retailers on our shopping mall. Just 15 minutes before the presentation my boss said, Sonia no English, you should give it in the regional language Punjabi. At home or with my relatives, I never speak Punjabi, although we listen and understand it very well. Now it was a great challenge and gave me shivers before presentation, but I just told myself it’s my mother tongue and my home ground, I can do it. The crowd was much more than expected and very local and regional, I don’t know from where did I got all that strength, from where did the words came, from where the sentences were formed but in the end I received appreciation from all. At times we don’t know our own potential, inside us lies the resource and limitless ideas to solve the mysteries of all challenges we come across. And in the process we get reconnected to our own self.

It felt as if I am reconnected to a half-forgotten, long buried part of myself. Not just a part of me, but the part that is truly creative and carefree and connected to those around me. Lovely feelings.

Later during the year I connected with my old schoolmates through facebook and that was also a great feeling as some part inside me which carried the hurt for several years, was healed, and it happened so gracefully. Most of the time we realize the hurt which we are carrying for years and drinking the poison of resentment, hardly the other person is concerned or even knows about it, I realized it was not anyone else who hurt me, as they did something so many years ago, for few minutes, I was the one who kept it alive and nourished it for so many years, I had chosen them to hurt me.

After all this reconnection and much more, for the first time in years, I had genuine, honest-to-goodness. I started talking more, laughing more, writing more, and creating more. It actually creates magic. Basically living much more, at times, reconnecting with the past–is the beginning of something bigger and better. The challenge lies in knowing when and what to shed and when/what to keep. Like most things, I suppose it is a learning process. I look forward to connecting further. It’s a constant dance with time and part of what makes life so very interesting.

You needn't limit this to family or students with whom you were once friends? But even with your coworkers, ex colleques, from your past companies? It is an amazing blessing to have an extended circle of family or friends of different religions and cultures. Through them, you can learn much more about life, you shall find that reconnecting to your roots will influence your life in many meaningful ways. And above all is the connection to God, our source from where we came, take some time out during each day to connect to this universal energy also.

Like  a tree flourishes as long as it keeps contact with its source and origin, the roots and through roots to the soil. Pull it out and it shall wither and die.