Possessing the Secret of Joy

Me in front of my closet exploding. Clothes bring me joy.

That’s the title of a book by Alice Walker. It’s about female genital mutilation. I have not read it, even though I love the title. I worry it may feel like misery porn.

Then I feel guilty. Like I don’t care that this is happening right now, this moment, in real time. A woman’s genitals are being mutilated.

I want to care about everything that’s wrong, all of it. But I’m just one woman trying to survive what went wrong in my own life.

Everyone has a story. I’m a writer and reader; I’m fond of stories.

I remember watching the movie The Color Purple with my parents when I was, like, ten, maybe. The book was also by Alice Walker. I remember being touched and devastated by the film.

I was a mature kid. I understood things I was too young to understand. Sometimes I feel like I knew more in my innocence than I know now, after the world has beaten it out of me.

Innocent me in my twenties

Everyone thinks I’m innocent and naive. I am. But that’s not all I am.

I’m also wise and strong. I’m also an idiot, but that’s a different conversation.

The world is burning. I feel like I’m trying to make s’mores.

I don’t know what else to do but live in my pretty world and read my happy books. Actually, if you knew me, you would discover that I read very sad, depressing books and listen to even more depressing music. As my best friend put it, “You listen to shit I wanted to slit my wrists to when I was 12.”

She’s not wrong.

Anyway, coming back to the world ending and my role in it:

What can I possibly do? Little old me…

I mean, honestly, I’m no one.

I have a dream of opening a spiritual center where I teach writing and spirituality.

I don’t have any money. I don’t even know if I have any energy. I’m over here trying to survive.

My life is small.

A few years ago, when my father was still alive, he told me I should become a guru. He was pseudo-serious. He said Indians are stupid; they will worship anyone. He said I should continue writing about spirituality and start making money trying to enlighten the population, especially in India.

He was kidding, and he wasn’t.

My father was a practical man. He believed in making money. He believed in education. He believed in doing something with your life.

I think he also believed I had something to say. He read my writing. He knew I was interested in spirituality. But he also wanted me to write a bestseller and kept telling me to write a book like Harry Potter. “The girl who wrote it is richer than the queen of England! Why can’t you write a children’s book?” he once shouted. Half joking, half totally serious.

I’ll tell you what that man was serious about. Money.

He didn’t understand why he had educated his daughter and spent his life savings on her, only for her to want to hang out in coffee shops and write whatever she was writing.

The thing is, I don’t want to be a guru. I barely know what day of the week it is some days. Trust me, I’m not the one you want leading the masses to salvation.

I wouldn’t mind being worshipped, but honestly, I’m a little interested in that money, too. If people are going to throw money at me to save their souls, I might be there for it.

What I really want to do with my life is what I do already. I sit in coffee shops with interesting people, shooting the shit and writing whatever it is I feel like writing. The difference is, I’m not currently getting paid to do this.

I mean, it would be a bonus to inspire people in a spiritual center and have a community of like-minded people. But I don’t really see myself being their leader. Like when aliens land and say, “Bring us to your leader.”

I gotta say, I don’t think I’m that person.

I don’t know how to save the world. Some days I’m not even sure how to save myself.

There have been days in my life when I couldn’t get out of bed and thought I would be better off dead. What the fuck am I going to teach anyone?

So I read my happy books. My sad books. I make my s’mores. I write my little blog posts.

Where did my dad get this crazy idea that I should become a guru?

Me at 25

Delusions of Grandeur

When I had my first manic episode at 25, I heard god telling me I was a prophet. I didn’t hear anything besides those words: a prophet, a messiah.

I called my bestie at work.

“What?” she asked.

“I think I’m the Messiah,” I said very casually.

“The who? The what? How dirty is your crack?” she asked in a hushed tone. “We are on a GM phone.”

I went to see my favorite psychiatrist, Dr. Anthony Michaels, may he rest in peace. He was a Jew. “There is no Messiah in Sikhism. You got it from our culture,” he said as I sat across from him in his office. “I asked my Rabbi when the Messiah is going to come. He said, ‘The day after he is not needed.’”

“Why did you keep me in the hospital for so long?” I asked.

“I can’t have you going around out there saying you are the Messiah.”

I didn’t hear anything about a mission or saving the world or making people bow down to me and throw dollar bills at my feet.

Me and Dad when I was 25

When I got back from the hospital, I told my father that god had spoken to me and told me I was a prophet.

My father had a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He was a logical, practical, intelligent man, bordering on genius.

When I told my father about this ridiculous notion, he just looked over at me—he was totally blind by then—and said, “OK.”

I said I thought I had to do things, go places, maybe dark places.

My father said to me, “Wherever you go, I’m going with you.”

My father died last year.

I can’t take him with me anymore. Not in the way he meant it then.

What I realized only later, only recently, is that he was with me through every dark place I had been. When I was depressed, he would wake me up and tell me I needed discipline in my life. He would make me plant flowers in the middle of the summer heat.

I was a radical bitch when I was manic. I said things to him I don’t even remember. He never held it against me; he never mentioned it; he pretended like it never happened.

I don’t know what he thought when I told him I was a prophet. I don’t know if he believed me or if he was simply allowing me to have my experience without trying to talk me out of it.

He was a smart man. He knew things I didn’t know. He also knew me.

Maybe he understood that I wasn’t going to save the world. Maybe he thought I could do something useful with my life, even if I never became a guru.

I don’t know.

My father sent me to an Ivy League school and wanted me to make something out of myself and my life. He was thinking more in terms of, like, lots and lots of money.

Do I think I’m a prophet? That’s a very personal question.

I feel very hesitant to answer that question. Many people with bipolar disorder think god is talking to them, and they hear that they are prophets, gods, and messiahs.

Am I just one of those people?

Is god talking to me?

I think god may be trying to talk to anyone who will listen and tell them it is their duty to help save humanity in whatever way they can.

I have a theory that has no scientific evidence behind it: I believe mentally ill people may have eliminated an emotional barrier between themselves and their souls, allowing them to feel the spirit of the overspirit, or universe, or god, or Waheguru, or whatever you want to call him, her, or it.

I could be wrong.

So am I a prophet?

Look, there are days I walk around town wearing a white, see-through shirt without a bra and forget that I live in a world with dirty men. I think I forget because I grew up in a home with a blind man. He was the only man who loved me without looking at me.

But here I go again, on a tangent…

My dad used to say to me whenever he didn’t like something I said, “Don’t go on a tangent!”

I have no idea if I’m a goddess or some crazy bitch who can’t control her mania.

Let’s say there is this minuscule possibility that I came to earth on some kind of mission from god. I’m going to tell you something. I will probably fail.

What if I just choose not to accept it?

This is insane. I recognize that.

If you are an atheist, I have a lot of respect for atheists because they reject traditional religion.

But if you don’t believe in a superpower or god or whatever, you probably believe I’m batshit crazy and should be institutionalized.

You may not be wrong.

Am I on a mission from god? Probably everyone is.

Our real task is to find out what that particular mission is for us.

I’m not special. I’m serious. I’m very regular. I’m not even exceptionally intelligent. I think I officially failed the GRE.

I feel like a complete asshole trying to convince people that I am anything other than Miss nina kaur.

That’s who I really am.

I’m just a girl. Trying to live in this world.

But this is not The Matrix, and I’m not the reluctant heroine.

I lived with a loving, beautiful inner voice speaking to my soul for 25 years.

It’s unreal, I am aware, but I am not the first human to experience this, and I won’t be the last.

So I guess the only question left is what am I going to do?

I think I’m gonna sit by the dock of the bay and waste time.

nina