Dare to be Sensitive
[Music]
[Music]
it’s 2013.
i’m in new york city in a room with 75
other people all gathered
for a personal transformation program
and we are doing an exercise called free
our inner animal don’t worry it was all
consensual
so we’re paired up the idea is we are
paired up with each other
and our partners are supposed to
our partners are supposed to provoke us
enough so that we can have a cathartic
experience
and release stuck energy
and it’s going really well at a moment
i realize there’s emotions in the room i
see around myself
and i see people crying i see people
sitting in a corner completely
disheveled
i see people shouting
i almost see people flying across the
room
i was having a very different experience
though
more my partner tried to provoke me the
more
i would go numb the more i would get
shut down
so what the facilitator did was they
added
more people to work with me at one point
i had five people surrounding me trying
to get some kind of emotions out of me
i am 35 at this time i am a solid
stoic rock of a man i am numb
and i’m kind of proud of it
but before i go further i want to talk
about the story of how i got to this
point in time
it’s 1984 i’m seven-year-old
growing up in a small town in india
we have my cousins visiting us for
summer vacations
we’ve just spent two months amazing
fun in my hometown in the foothills of
the himalayas
and today is the day when they leave to
go back home
i’m upset i’m completely devastated that
they’re leaving
i’m crying and my mother sees me crying
and upset
and she comes to me and in the most
loving
you know as a mother is protective of
her child she comes to me and says
son i’m really worried about you
how are you going to live your life if
you’re this sensitive
in that moment i took those words to my
heart
i decided that feeling that
much was not okay i said to myself
i will never allow myself to feel that
way ever again
a few years later it’s 1991
i’m woken up with the news that my
grandmother’s just passed away
i’m sad i’m shocked
also because we had just cremated my
grandfather’s body the day before
i entered into this room and i see my
father
on the floor surrounded by my extended
family
and he’s crying and he’s inconsolable
he’s completely out of control
he’s just lost both of his parents in a
span of 48 hours
i look at him with all these emotions
coming out and i’m shocked
and i’m scared he was my bedrock he was
my emotional rock
the way i remembered my father was that
he could handle any intense emotions
without any issues
in that moment subconsciously
i decided that i had to be the brave one
now
that i had to be the responsible one
in that moment i also saw my father’s
vulnerability
as a weakness
by this time i had already made up my
mind that men are not supposed to be
that
emotional
so from then on any time i went through
any kind of intense emotions
i went through any kind of heartbreak i
would reinforce this idea
that i will never allow myself
to feel this way ever again that feeling
that much was not
okay for me as a man
it’s 2002 now
i’m 25 and i get a phone call
it’s my cousin at the other end and he
tells me that my father’s passed away
he tells me that he was in a motorbike
accident three days ago and he had been
in the hospital
for three days and nobody called me
because
they felt that it wasn’t a critical
situation
and that i shouldn’t be alarmed i was
angry i was really angry that nobody
had informed me that this had happened
i was really angry at the system that
failed my father
i was angry and felt powerless that i
couldn’t do anything the time had passed
but my rational mind was busy trying to
figure out the logistics to get to india
i was living in edinburgh by this time
next day i’m in india
i’m in front of my father’s body
he’s lying on a slab of ice
i look at his face and i see that he’s
gone
and i couldn’t show any emotions
i look at him and i want to
be inconsolable i want to lash out
but i’m also realizing that i am now
the head of the family that i can’t be
seen
as a man going out of control
that i have to take care of things
so after a while i come back to scotland
and buried myself
in my career and shutting my emotions
more and more down over the next decade
it also cost me my relationship my first
marriage
so back in 2013 in this room in new york
city
where i am surrounded by five people
all trying to get some kind of emotion
out of me
by this time i’m living in this narrow
bandwidth of emotions
where i wouldn’t allow myself to feel
sad
or any kind of pain and at the same time
i wouldn’t allow myself to feel any
happiness
or joy
and in one moment something
broke open
last 30 years of suppressed emotions
just all came out in one go
and i grabbed my facilitator by
her shoulders i pinned her against the
wall
and i literally shouted with all my
might in her face
and the words that could all come out of
my mouth were
i don’t know who i am
and i said those words and i fell on the
ground
curled up in fetal position and just
cried
for next two years i went on a journey
to discover who i had become
i went on a journey to investigate my
emotions
my vulnerability my sensitivity my
feelings
i surrounded myself with people and with
teachers
with women who could give me who could
teach me how to keep an
open heart and he could point out when i
would close my heart
women who were not afraid to point out
when i was trying to hide my feelings i
surrounded myself with men
who had done the work to understand
their self-worth
men who were not afraid to show emotions
men for whom vulnerability was not a
weakness but strength
and that completely transformed my life
i started to see my relationships
changing as i was able to
incorporate vulnerability incorporate my
sensitivity
i had some of the best connections i had
ever had in my life
not just romantically not just intimacy
wise but
with my family with my colleagues with
my coworkers with my friends
everywhere everything started to
transform
and i took connection and relationship
as a practice
and i made that my life goal
since then i’ve worked with hundreds of
men
and i see this across the board
that our culture has conditioned men
to see our vulnerability as weakness to
see
our sensitivity as something wrong
last year i did a men’s connection
workshop
i facilitated it at the ministry of
justice
it was a room full of men and i asked
them one
simple question i asked them how are you
feeling
and you know what i got back every
single man responded with just
two words i am good
and i’m fine
so i asked him since when
as us men have only two words to
describe our feelings
one of the men got up and said oh
when i share my feelings it feels like
i’m burning some people
i’m burning others by sharing my
feelings
someone else got up and said when i
share my feelings
i feel like someone will take advantage
of me
and that’s my experience across the
board working with men
that we carry with us this invisible
belief
invisible burden that we don’t want to
get let go of
so in conclusion i want to leave you
with this
as men i think we grow up thinking that
our vulnerability
is weakness that our sensitivity
is somehow wrong that our feelings will
burden other people
we are walking around sleeping walking
around
sacrificing ourselves for our families
for our friends for our partners
and at the same time deep down we’re
really angry
and that anger leaks out anyway
we are emotionally unable
unavailable to the world
i believe that we need to create a world
where young boys
are told that their sensitivity is to be
cherished
something to be celebrated a world where
vulnerability is not seen as weakness
but as strength a world where
asking for help is not just okay but it
is the healthy thing to do
a world where men can share our feelings
our emotions our vulnerability are
burdened with other men without any
problem
i believe that if we heal this part of
our collective consciousness
we will get to heal our
ancestors the wounds of our ancestors
and also the generations to come
i think that’s how we heal our entire
lineage
that’ll be a world that’ll have love
more love and more kindness
to ourselves towards other people
towards all living being and even our
planet
so i want to invite you
there to be sensitive thank you