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