Hard decisions--what kind of love is enough

I am a believer that my emotions in any area of my life are a strong indicator for learning that something isn't working in my life. They are also an opportunity to make a change that would bring my actions more in line with my desires and goals.

All that being said this realization and change is not always easy.

Today I told the man I am seeing that I will be taking some space over the next few days to decide what I would like to do about the concerns I have over my involvement with him. This has taken a lot of courage. I am at a point in my life where I have to decide if what is beautiful lovely and works in our relationship makes up for what is lacking and what all my visions of the future include.

Do the liberal open and nonjudgmental aspects of his persona make up for the distance. The geographic distance across states. The emotional distance I feel due to his lack of effort to "be there" for me or check up on me. In the past I have requested that we speak on the phone and connect more, only to be faced with strong resistance. His reasons are a dislike for phone/email in long distance relationships due to prior baggage related to this. I don't really understand his reasons but am more amazed at the resistance. This seems like a fairly small issue at the surface, what is bigger is his lack of desire at working with me when I am having difficulty with something. What kind of future will we have if he chooses not to be there for me in the future?

Will the love and respect make up for the distance and choosing not to engage? Will this choice to not engage even exist when we are geographically close? What makes me think that this will change and not me an issue in the future? If talking about what isn't working in the relationship brings up fear and anxiety for me now, if it happens in the future what will I be teaching my children about ways to deal with interpersonal issues?

Grant me Allah the inner strength to make these concerns clear to my partner. Help me communicate such that we decide to work together to change this relationship dynamic. And if that is not what we are able to do, grant me the wisdom to realize this early and the strength to leave him and be open to the next relationship or period of time with myself, which ever is better for my growth. I love you God. Please love and sustain me through this.

Personal experience--Learning from feedback

The last two days have been quite hard. I ran to get a report done but I didn't allow time for feedback on a summary from my boss as her last email to me seemed like its a okay send as is. A vendor showed up unexpectedly cutting my work time. I decided to make him wait a little and quickly finish something so he can give me a ride to the train station. Once on the train my boss calls with requested changes. I complete as many as I can on my blackberry and forward the rest to a coworker, apparently missing yet another detail not clear to me.

I go to NY to a networking meetup where I work the crowd and further my learning well only to get more feedback emails from my boss. This morning at work an after project review has clear comments from teammates directed at me. Later at lunch my boss tells me my tone is considered unrespectful by some although she cannot tell me who said what and doesn't know what other feedback to give me.

I quickly talk to a few ppl including one person I sensed had issues with me. Though I was feeling beaten up I developed a great plan to make sure I get feedback from people directly and keep paper trail of improvement as recommended by an honest adviser. My sensitive body is working on overload making breathing and functioning very difficult.

When I meditate I realize the learning in all of this and also realize that my reduced hours and "low" commitment is a conscious effort to allow myself evening hours to build my business. I also realize that I need to be in an industry I like to really be driven to move to the next level. Enter a new goal--move to CA where I work in a tech company I like. This will yield almost automatic motivation and due to my placement in a techie environment much better and faster movement of business development.

Then dad calls and we have a crying reunion (we had a huge falling out a few months ago). He has a plausible business goal and I tell him details about mine. And my dad is all for it. A big boost to the ego I tell you.

Though painful this whole experience has given me a lot of great learnings as well as goals for behavior change and new actions. These are some of the good things:

-I will now be more cognizant of my tone and have a team of well wishers who will be giving me feedback directly. This will help me in future regardless of what I do professionally
-I am making a career change to allow for more happiness and motivation earlier with a CA job rather than later with my business taking off
-I have a new ally in my father
-I am reminded to focus on my responses and not the uncontrollable elements of my situation. The latter being my forte as a perfectionist, which does not serve me and my goals

All in all I am at a great place. Thank you God for all your blessings and lessons. Aide me God in learning from these faster and with more strength, love, and compassion for myself. And God please do the same for my gentle readers.

Powerfully changing how we learn

There is a part of our brain that filters various forms of stimulation and creates a subset of stimuli we pay attention to. What we pay attention to often determines our path towards successfully accomplishing our goals or not. Learning occurs when we choose to reorient out thinking to different kinds of stimuli than we were before.

Three things help reorient our filtering system:
1. the need you feel at a specific point in time. Ex. if you feel pain you usually try to attribute your pain to something that causes the pain
2. Your view of yourself and the world
3. Goals that are in our conscious awareness due to your thinking about them

The more we choose to clarify what we want the more we will notice what behavior and actions take us closer towards those wants and what detracts from them. We can then eliminate the behaviors that take us away from our goals and increase the behaviors that take us towards them. This is a much more powerful and fast way of learning than ignoring the score increases and decreases of our actions and waiting for large external indicators or an authority to tell us what works best.

Kamila Shamsie--Karthography and my thoughts

I love Kamila Shamshie. She is my current favorite desi. The freshness of her style, the humor in all her lines makes me feel like I am reading a life update from my very own pathaka girl. A pathaka girl is what I call a smart funny witty Pakistani girl who has a knack of telling you about sad incidents with just as much wit and humor as the happy ones. The life of a pathaka girl seems like a stream of stories with little in it that can't be laughed about.

Kartography which I am reading right now is Shamshie's first novel but the second one I am reading. It is about the lives of two childhood friends, their parents, and their city Karachi in their teenage years and beyond. I am at a juncture of the novel where the narrator Raheen is in her junior year of college in the US and her friend Karim calls her after years of separation in which Karim moves to London, his parents get divorced, his mother remarries, and their letter contact comes to a halt after both feel misunderstood by the other.

Karim calls because he thinks Raheen finally is trying to understand the city and themselves in light of the larger happenings of the city nature, all those things that were hard to face earlier. Raheen who obviously wasn't at that place replies with anger that he misread the paper she wrote that started this conversation. While she was trying to talk about their separation and how she wished it never happened and how he was ignoring the stories of their shared past. But Karim was speaking of how their understanding and themselves was imperfect due to the isolation in which it lived without knowing and thinking of sorrows that belong to the rest of the world. The difference was of perspective.

I haven't been back to Pakistan in many years and the green card situation makes it likely that I won't be going back for many more. I wonder if this is something I have chosen so that I forget the nuances of my own story of being a child born in Kuwait to Pakistani parents returning to learn of the ethnic and class tensions that divided my life as I knew it in Karachi in so many ways. The backdrop of sectarian and ethnic violence that marked my teenage years. The ethnic and class differences that bound different parts of my family or the conscious effort to ignore it all as I continued to live my life focusing on the smaller dramas of romance, heart break and grades. Is it that even today after having a career and financial independence I'd like to forget those stories. Perhaps its time I accepted them and build with them the reality I want.

“Stir fried saali”—a sweet saali learning how to co-create her stir fried world

Welcome my sweet and gentle reader to the blog of Stir-Fried Saali.

I hope you are well and shining brightly. Thank you for coming. I feel honored to have you here.

I am a saali. In South Asia saali is the word for sister-in-law*. It connotes several emotions related to the saali—beauty, passion, fun, flirtatiousness, freshness. However, by nature of her relationship the saali remains tangential to most lives in her immediate circle. For the wife she remains a young harmless and naïve sister. For the husband a source of flirting pleasure but never someone to whom he feels any serious commitment that involves obligations. And for children a fun and playful aunt to go to for love and feel-good affection when the moral judgements and obligations of their parents’ world leave them feeling low.

Although the saali moves in the same circles as her family members, unlike them she does not “have” to do anything. She has ultimate freedom to experience whatever appeals to her. The practicing of this freedom, and passion with which she does so is the reason for her lively joy, a joy that prevades everything and everyone she touches. Those that come into contact with saali feel happier and revived. Their world looks brighter and they feel that they have the energy to strive for their dreams. For this gift they love her and like addicts they return to her repeatedly for their wellness elixir.

But cultural archetypes are idealized models constructed to allow us to understand how things would function if all other influences on a subject were not present. Reality is seldom so clean.

Regardless of where a saali comes from, being a free thinking woman she will always have her own opinions and values. She may live different parts of her life with different individuals. But her whole self, her inner values, and the seeming contradictions between them is something that she may not always share. For to share all parts of herself with everyone will put saali’s social value at stake. She therefore strives to provide observers with an image consistent with what they believe her to be.

I am everything a saali connotes. I am also a third culture kid and am in someways a more superior impression manager than most saalis. I amaze myself with my own ability to be a cultural chameleon. This is not to say that I am falsely presenting myself since growing up in different cultures from a young age has made my thought processes very multicultural. Nevertheless, if you know me I will only show you parts of my values, the one’s you are more likely to accept and appreciate.

I’m learning that if you wear masks long enough they become hard to take it off. Initially it is due to a sense of discomfort and overwhelming fear at the very thought of taking them off. But once you get past that you realize its because of inner confusion. Confusion about who one really is for in learning what one think others want one to be, one forgets what it is like to be one’s whole sweet authentic self.

When that happens it becomes hard to be the sweet happy saali that the world loves, for there is no longer a through line in what the saali is. Like the fallen leaves of a tree in autumn that toss and turn wherever the winds of life take them, saali inadequately bungles through life, for like the leaves she is no longer connected to a consistent loving whole—the deepest part of her soul that is linked to God.

I believe that allowing my inner voice the freedom to speak clearly and often is a key step to establishing that connection and trust with self, God and His universe. The thoughts expressed in this blog are one of my key attempts to do so this year. In it I plan to share the experiences and thoughts that challenge my spirit to understand my stir-fried world by looking deeper and learn better ways of being, doing, and creating as I learn to be united with God in creating the life and world I intend to bring into being.

This process may not always be easy for spiritual growth and development involves dealing with deep seated thought patterns and fears that have so far held one back. But I have faith that such difficulty and pain is a purposeful teacher. Although it can be hurtful and annoying if not consciously understood, just like stir fried vegetables look and taste so much better due to their experience with heat and spices, my body and soul will come out stronger and more successful on both worldly and spiritual counts. As I understand and learn my inner truth I will share with you my process with love and light. My intention is that this will bring healing and aid to your spiritual paths also.

Peace and Love,
Stir fried saali

*Saali can also be used as a swear word in Urdu. So I advise my non-South Asian readers to use this word with caution with everyone other than myself.