Identities Worth Sharing A Healing Ceremony

welcome

to the future

hello my name is andrei pavin vashist i

am part’s

passionate activist professional

co-creator and poetic storyteller

[Applause]

clear mind to think with clear eyes

to see with clear ears

to hear with a clear mouth to speak with

and a clear heart to feel with

may we have the serenity to accept the

things we cannot change

the courage to change the things we can

and the wisdom to know the difference

truth we reveal truths we conceal

there’s so many layers to these truths

that we can

choose to peel stories are medicine

we can share them and choose to heal

stories are medicine i’ll share mine

and prove it’s real bonjour

namaste hello my name is andrei pavin

vashist

and i invite you today into a healing

ceremony and any healing requires

medicine

and so today i brought with me

sandalwood one of the medicines of my

father’s land from south asia

that has beautiful properties it can

help purify within

us and outside of us and if stories are

going to be medicine

they also require a seed just like this

plant

had a seed at one point and those seeds

are the truths

sometimes buried deep within us within

our cultures

and our stories and i want to share some

of those

truths with you today and when we

nurture those truths we require

nutrients just like the plant

love courage and when these truths

emerge they become a wilderness

that we must brave with risk

preparation faith

and so i want you to imagine that

wilderness for a moment in the backdrop

the mountains and underneath us the

rocks

and the stones the ancient ones that

lived there belong

long before us and flowing from that

mountain is a river

that brings us to a present moment where

all life flourishes all the beings that

live underneath the soil

on top of the land in the sky and in the

water

surrounded by trees and plants the

fungus the bacteria all that life that

we cherish

and that river flows into an ocean that

could feel like the future

full of possibility but unknown who’s

there and who will be there before us

and after us

and this timeline might seem very linear

to you but i want you to imagine the

gift the water gives us

it rises from that ocean goes back to

the mountain and creates cycles

and our stories and our time repeats

itself

and i want you to imagine that river for

a moment with two fish swimming inside

two young fish and they’re going along

their journey and they bump into an

older fish who says

hello how’s the water the two fish look

at each other and say

the water’s fine have a great day and

they go along their journey

and as they continue along one of them

pauses

and reflects and asks the other fish

what the heck is water and

during my journey i didn’t realize the

water i was swimming in

the stories that i belonged to and even

when i knew the stories i don’t know if

they belonged to me like being a boy

being a man being a student or being an

employee

being a son a brother a father

a husband a canadian a torontonian an

indian a quebecois

the list goes on we’re this part of my

identities

recently i’ve learned new stories about

colonization

about capitalism about patriarchy about

individualism and loneliness and i’m

gonna

take this platform of ted which is about

ideas we’re spreading

and we’re going to go a little deeper

with identities with sharing

so my story starts with my mom and dad

my dad comes from india my mom from

quebec

they landed in montreal in the 70s and

they couldn’t speak the same language

they were from different cultures yet

they found something in common

love to dance and so these the language

of their bodies to connect

and fall in love and in that love and if

you’ve really been in love you know that

love can lead to heartbreak

my dad got called back into india for an

arranged marriage

and after a year he annulled it and came

back to this land

broke tradition to be with my mom to

create a new life

and they came to toronto and that was

where i was born and so in that story

there’s a lot of love

and heartbreak my mom she took me to

india for a second time when i was seven

years old

when i was there we got stranded in the

airport mumbai for 24 hours

and while i was there as a young boy

seven years old i just want to explore

what’s around me

and ended up outside of the airport in a

laneway watching people walking back and

forth and i saw a young boy a little

younger than me

he seemed poor he seemed vulnerable

he was asking for help he was asking

someone to help him

and i’ve seen his two men who weren’t

from that land travelers

who were walking along they seemed

strong they seemed able they seemed

confident

and the boy asked him for help and one

of the men looked at him and rose’s hand

and struck him down i was heartbroken

i was sad i was confused

i was upset i was scared and as that man

walked away

i thought what could i do i’m just seven

years old i had a chocolate bar

and so i thought to myself i’m gonna

give him this chocolate bar i’m gonna

make him feel love

and so he was walking in my direction

and my heart started pounding i was

nervous

i was like what if i talk to him and he

becomes humiliated because i saw him get

hurt or what if i insult him and say the

wrong things

he’s coming he’s coming i said nothing

he continues walking

then my heart starts beating stronger

now courage starts speaking andre you

turn around and you grab him you tell

him what you want to tell him

i took him i said hello he didn’t

understand what i was saying because we

didn’t speak the same language

we couldn’t understand what we were

saying to each other yeah i took the

chocolate bar out

we immediately we knew what we were

talking about love

i gave it to him and he smiled and i

never forgot the feeling of that smile

it taught me that the courage to love is

worth

every fear and insecurity in hindsight i

also learned about colonialism

how people from different lands were

oppressing their people it’s a very sad

journey

and one that we still live today

the next story i want to share with you

is young andre teenage andre

he wants to enter into a relationship so

i was approaching girls i wanted to have

some girlfriends

and i had my aunties telling me hey

andre

make sure you put women above you when

you treat them with respect

i said auntie why why would i put them

above me aren’t we supposed to be equal

i’m being taught we all are all equal

everyone treat each other equally but

they started realizing why

because they hadn’t been treated equal

my mom

the woman of her generation the woman

before that had not been treated equal

and so to put them above was make them

equal again

and with the metoo movement that uh

became true

we started seeing the river that were

swimming in the stories that made us

and broken men create broken men and so

my story is true that i became a broken

man for a moment

and in high school i fell in love and i

was in a great friendship of love and

intimacy and my partner had many highs

and lows

and i reached a low one day we’re at a

party

and i was filled with anger i saw the

jealousy

in hindsight was feared insecurity and i

rose my hand

i slapped her in the face a moment

that broke her heart that i regret

i never made the same mistake twice yet

as me too movement emerged

the love encouraged inside me revealed

that i had to tell this truth and so i

called her

and i apologized and she said thank you

and we talked some more and she revealed

some other stories about her life that i

was not aware of the water that she was

swimming in and women around me were

sharing these stories as well

so many people revealing this truth that

we’re all swimming in

and a couple days before this talk i

called her and asked her may i share

their story

because it’s not mine and share it’s

ours and she said yes

and she all said to me andre i didn’t

know i needed that apology

until i received it which taught me that

healing is not a linear journey

sometimes not an obvious one and today i

work in a program in my organization

around women entrepreneurship where we

put

women as leaders in our economy

and one of the leaders there to talk to

me about feminism as

the opportunity for all genders to

flourish and so we live in a system of

patriarchy we are assuming that waters

and it’s our work to dismantle it

now i become an adult and i came here to

university of toronto scarborough

i was one of my first lecturers halls

was here i walked these halls just like

many of you

and in those halls just like my parents

i danced and i met a beautiful woman

and we fell in love and we became

partners and many years later we got

married

moved to another city and respecting a

child and as we were expecting someone

said to me andre

you’re nesting what do you mean i’m

nesting like you’re nesting

you’re building a home and i was like

that makes sense like imagine that

wilderness and those birds

grabbing those branches and those twigs

getting support from their community and

making a home and there i was

building furniture and getting our home

ready and when i was ready

i was ready the truth is

i wasn’t ready and so back into these

halls here i was

starting a club on campus became the

vice president of the campus life

i was a research fellow multiculturalism

i was

an award recipient and the truth is

i never graduated from this place point

five cut it away

and you ask why you’re so close you did

so well why didn’t you do it

and my heart was broken in that time

where my mom died

she was my heart she was my soul when

she left

parts of me were broken and i didn’t

have the emotional maturity to deal with

it

and so i turned to drugs and alcohol to

deal with it

and that journey maintained to me i

wasn’t able to grow from that point even

though i

grew my career even though i raised was

written and raised a family i wasn’t

ready

and it became so clear a couple months

after my son was born

we were in montreal for a wedding and my

wife and i left the wedding

we had a good time we started fighting

and now both our parents were there

to greet us with our son and we ended up

arguing and we were fighting over who

should hold our son

and then our parents were getting upset

and they were arguing with us and they

were in the daylight of montreal

fighting

as a family in front of everyone i said

this is not right

reflecting on what my son would have

seen i knew we couldn’t live that way

anymore and we had to break a cycle

a cycle that was given to me by many of

my ancestors by my father by my

grandfathers of abusing alcohol that was

the last month i ever drank alcohol

and i have never drank in many years

since then and i’ve made the commitment

that you i’ll never drink again

for my entire lifetime my son will never

see me drink

now it seems like a happy ending but

there’s more

last year for my birthday i went on a

bit of a vision quest

and so when you stop drinking you stop

doing these things you start healing you

start to blossom

and i was doing so well in my career i

even graced the cover of my business

magazine in my city

and i wanted to find out more about

myself and so i went on this quest four

night fast

three days three nights in the land just

by myself

with the nature as guide healer and

teacher and i found out

more about who i was and they told me

when you go back home you tell your

family and friends who you are

and so i did some of them supported me

and some of them got

met me with anger resentment

they were frustrated andre why are you

leaving be home be here with us

and so my dad told me a story about two

brothers one brother went into the

mountains for

spiritual enlightenment to get connected

to the land to find his purpose

and the other brother stayed home and

built a farm and a family raised a

family

and many years after the brothers came

together to share their experiences

and so the brother of the farm grabs the

sticks and throws it he says brother

you’ve been in the mountains

what have you taught us teach us

something how can you grab that stick

for us

and so the brother meditated

calmed himself down gathered his

spiritual energy and went for the stick

it didn’t move he says brother you’ve

been here on the farm with your family

what have you learned

he said child please grab the stick

it taught me that there’s many

opportunities in life to do different

journeys

and when we get confronted with an or

statement buddhism and many other

cultures teach us that we don’t say

or we say end

is it this or this yes and through that

creative energy do that create attention

new cultures can emerge as i shared this

talk with my wife a couple days ago

she cried i asked her why why are you

crying

he said andre i see myself in those

stories broken

i’m also so proud of how far we’ve come

in our healing journey and we hugged

with gratitude to each other so the

final story i want to share with you

is about my son he’s the next generation

and me and him we go to the forest once

a week we tell these stories of puffin

and bravery we share our identities we

explore the land we support the land

inside of ourselves

who we are my wife and i are very

dedicated to his journey we do the

adventures of poven and bravery his name

is avery we need him bravery

and i worry about the river that he’s

in and i’ve shared you very personal

stories

there are bigger stories around us that

have caught us in that stream

that are hard to imagine ourselves

letting go of and i’m going to take us

to the ocean again

to a larger past and potentially a

larger future to explore what that story

could be like

i want you to imagine some humans

because i come from a place we call

europe

asia africa they take boats and they

travel the oceans and they come to a

place that

we call turtle island or the americas

and with them they come with a version

of building a society building a culture

and to do that they have to extract in

the land and move the people out of the

way and as they extract the land and

they move as they extract the land they

run out of the land

what do they do they move west and so

they grab the land they extract the land

they take the land they move the people

they run out what do they do

they move west and they’re taking the

land and taking the land they move the

people and what do they do

they move west so there’s nowhere else

to go

and we’ve riven to the skies we’ve seen

the earth from below we know there’s

only

one planet and that story of capitalism

is always

always about growth that we can grow

there’s always more there’s always more

but now we know there’s only so much

that we can share that’s that story is

every day in our gdps

in our job growth our profit growth our

inner growth we’re always trying to grow

grow grow grow grow and i’m worried

about the ecological crisis i’m worried

about our planet and i’m worried that my

son’s gonna be part of that story

it’s our job to help him think about a

different story

collectively and so i want you to take

you back to the forest

back to that wilderness that we explored

together i’m going to share a poem by

david white

as we walk along this forest breathing

like the ones in the ancient stories who

could

cross a bed of dry and shimmering leaves

without making a sound

we would come to a place that

feels like nowhere yet leads to

everywhere

with only one task to trouble us with

tightening and

tiny and frightening requests questions

that can make

and unmake our lives questions that have

been patiently waiting for us

questions that have no right to go away

who are you what is your name

human does anyone know where a human

comes from the word

hummus the soil the land

it’s also related to the word humble we

are humble land beings

i was also embarrassed of my name once

in high school

my name they called me andre andre but i

had a middle name pavin

and one of my friends who was enamored

by indian culture i told her my name

i didn’t think she would tell anyone and

i would come too late for english class

and one day i came late to english

to open the door everyone said good

morning pavin

and they could see me exposed

ashamed embarrassed of my name i wasn’t

ready to carry that identity

now recently i went to a gathering we

went to a circle and everyone asked me

what is your name

i said pavin hello proud of who i am

so i want to ask you what is your name

i mean it not the one that the starbucks

barista takes when you want to get a

coffee

i mean what is your name the name that

when it’s spoken

you know who you are that when it’s

called out you answer

because you know what your life’s

purpose is you know what your journey is

about i want you to close your eyes for

a moment

actually i want you to whisper your name

to yourself

the name you want to reclaim

now we’re in that wilderness again

together love and courage

on the count of three we’re going to see

our names out together we’re going to

bring our shared spirit into this room

are you ready

one two three

i heard you i didn’t feel you i want to

feel it i want this room to feel our

names i want this room to feel our

shared spirit of belonging

so with love one with courage too what

is your name

pavin we belong to each other in this

moment

stories are medicine let’s share them

and choose to heal

let’s apologize let’s forgive

let’s go into the mountains let’s raise

our families

let’s confide in the ones we love and

let’s share ourselves like i did with

two

with you today in front of my family my

friends and the community i was raised

in

we all have identities we’re sharing

i’ll see you along the river

you