What is your real identity or put simply,
Who are you really?
Questions like these have the power to penetrate our heart and given our conditioning,
We want to come up with an answer for this question.
The moment we capture the response to this question in an answer,
We limit ourselves.
The role that we play in our personal life,
In our professional life,
More often than not,
We tend to identify with that role,
Some of us more deeply than others.
The problem with this kind of identification is that that particular role has its corresponding job description,
If you may,
Attributes,
Pros,
Cons,
Triumphs,
Failures,
Etc.
The moment we identify with a particular role,
We inherit all those connotations,
Whether we want it or not.
And the moment we inherit them,
We either substantiate them,
Defend them or fight for them,
Fight against them.
And that's why it's very painful when through force of nature,
That particular role goes away and we are left with just ourselves without any identity.
You will see there is a lot of,
I'm not saying this applies to all of you,
But maybe some of it applies to some of you.
When we go to college,
The college pride,
The sports,
The college mascot,
We identify deeply with it.
The culture encourages us and we fall prey to identifying with that.
That pride makes us fight for our college,
Against other colleges.
That competition is bred into us.
And even when we are out of that college,
When we are with friends,
Because we go to that college,
It becomes a talking point.
If something good or bad were to happen,
If you happen to work for one of the high profile companies,
And if that company makes an uproar in the culture,
Your friends and family will talk to you about it.
As if you are that company,
You working for someone is equal to you being that company.
Because this idea of doing something or playing a role without identifying with that role is just unfathomable to many of us.
Can I work for a company without identifying being that company?
And this is quite evident in our language.
Oh,
We do this.
And by we,
I mean my company.
That's why it's very painful when we have to leave that company,
Or when we have to retire.
For many of us,
That the place we work at,
We work for becomes one of the biggest identities.
Being a parent is another example,
Being a mom,
Being a dad.
That's all we identify with.
Although we are just playing a role.
And that role has a starting point.
We were not always a father,
We were not always a mother.
That role consumes us,
Which is okay.
That's our responsibility.
Identifying is something else.
And without identification,
We can still perform the role,
Albeit in a fuller way,
In a more objective way.
We don't have to defend a role,
Like we have to defend an identity.
We don't have to justify ourselves so as to support or to refute a particular identity.
Once we start discarding our identities,
Which are quite fickle,
To be honest,
They are not absolute.
We don't think about them on a constant basis.
But whenever we do,
More often than not,
There is suffering.
And even if there is pride or pleasure,
It's at the expense of someone else's lowering,
If you may.
Again,
I'm not a father,
Neither am I a mother.
So what I'm talking about is a generic theme,
Nothing particular to offend anyone.
The moment we identify,
We inherit the connotations,
We limit ourselves,
And our suffering begins.
And it is sustained as long as we identify with something.
A role is not us,
A title is not us,
A profession is not us.
Yet we have this romantic idea that almost always always brings more suffering.
For some of us,
Maybe we have cajoled ourselves into believing that it brings purpose,
It brings meaning.
Sure,
Maybe it will bring some meaning,
But we sell ourselves short when we settle for a meaning and purpose way lower than our capacity.
Our capacity is to perform any role,
And we choose one role and we dedicate ourselves to that role.
And every time we have to defend that role,
There is suffering,
There is unhappiness,
There's conflict,
Disharmony.
And the role and the title brings in a lot of expectations.
I don't know what it is like to be a mother,
But I do know what it is like to be a son.
So when my mom says that I'm your mother,
You're supposed to do this,
It is expected that you're supposed to do this.
Or when my mom compares what I do to what my brother does,
It's a comparison of roles.
A mother should do this,
A son should do this.
And if there is any violation for whatever reason,
It's unacceptable.
My connection to my mom is bigger than the role.
My connection to all of you listening is bigger than the titles or the organizations that connect us.
That's what friendship is.
Friendship has no connotations.
That's the beauty of this title.
If you want a title,
This is as broad a title as it gets.
Some cultures have even encapsulated the duties of a friend in a straitjacket.
But as far as I'm concerned,
If we want a title,
The title can be a friend.
And a friend can also be a mother,
Can also be a father,
A brother,
A manager,
A co-worker,
An employee.
Just because you're a mother doesn't mean you can't be a friend.
The fact that you are a friend supersedes,
After a certain age of course,
You being a mother or a father.
Friendship is more primal,
Much closer to the heart.
And that's what we go into work for.
We go into work for friendships.
We hang out with our friends for friendships.
And the more we hang out in a gathering where there are titles,
And this is probably what happens at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners,
Is there is a straitjacket of relationships,
Titles.
And we are always falling short because there is this ideal list of duties that need to be performed,
Which is freely available on the internet,
For us to fall short of every time.
There is no list for being a friend.
I feel this is a gathering of friends who want to discuss things about happiness,
Peace,
Harmony in daily lives.
There's no shoulds,
Musts in this platform.
And that's what makes us feel free.
Titles and roles and identifications,
We don't feel free.
But there is very unique experience where we have being friends without expectations.
It makes us feel free.
And from that freedom,
We want to give more to this friendship.
That's the experience of love.
Our society has somehow made love very exclusive.
The definition of love is very exclusive and narrow.
But this friendship is the experience of love,
Where we feel connected to each other for no reason at all.
Think about how you would have felt if your parents were your friends,
If your spouses were your friends.
No title.
Title is only for practical reasons.
After a certain point,
You don't go on announcing that so and so is my friend.
No,
We are friends.
You don't have to even say that.
It's an unwritten handshake.
And then think about it.
There is no moment in time when you become friends with someone.
There is a moment in time when your role begins when you become a girlfriend or boyfriend,
Husband,
Wife,
Mother,
Father,
Manager.
But can you find a point in time?
Oh,
Now I'm a friend.
Before this second,
I was not a friend,
But now I'm a friend.
No,
That's not how it happens.
Becoming friends is a very mysterious act.
It requires a very different openness that we all readily had when we were kids.
And that's why we still have friends that we made when we were kids.
And those are much more dear friends than the friends that we have made now.
Because we became friends without any reason.
Everything else now becomes harder because we have lost that innocence,
That openness.
We have to jettison this idea.
We have to perform roles and identify with those roles and adopt an idea that we have to perform roles and be friends.
And I would encourage all of you to go and visit your friendships,
At least in your mind for now,
And find what is that special element that makes you free with your friends,
That makes you feel free with your friends.
And what is that element in your other relationships that have titles and roles and expectations that makes you not feel free?
And can we liberate ourselves from the experience that doesn't make sense?
I'm not saying we should jettison the role and responsibilities,
But at least we have the agency to jettison our identities with those roles.
Liberate other people from doing something because of this identification that we have with our role.
We open the hook for friendship and we remove the chains that weigh us down,
Weigh others down with the burden of identification with the roles.
Then every day becomes a Mother's Day.
Every day becomes a Valentine's Day,
Father's Day,
Sibling's Day,
If there is such a day.
And we have to be able to do that.
If people report to us,
Maybe we can ease that pressure so that they look at us or we encourage them by loosening our foothold from our identity as their manager or their boss so that they can eventually become our friends.
And all friendships are different,
But the least of all friendships is the shared love,
The connection,
Feeling connected,
Feeling free.
I guess that's the most important sign of being a friend is that you feel free and they feel free.
That's the real core definition of a friend.
That's the only metric that we can capture this relationship,
This role into and see how these layers of burden that we feel on our shoulders in our life start eroding.
It starts with the first question I started with,
Who are you really?
Ask yourself,
Ask yourself,
Am I this role?
Do I act as if I am this role?
And if I cannot operate without a role,
Can I make it a role of friendship,
Age,
Gender,
Profession?
Nothing is a barrier for friendship.
This core feeling of feeling free,
The experience of that is so primal.
And once we taste it,
And once we see the route to it,
We can't unsee it.
Our life won't be the same again.
You can't go back from freedom to captivity to the straitjacket of roles and expectations and connotations.
There's no restriction on how many friends you can have.
Try it.
Extend your arm for friendship.
Doesn't matter to who.
And leave that hand extended.
The universe is supporting it,
So it won't ever get tired.
Thank you.
