Day of Reconciliation
Hey y’all, I hope you are doing well. I do not know how this happened, but we are less than 1 week from Valentine’s Day! How quickly time flies. Although, this year seems to be a lot different—at least I hope it will be. We are not out of the woods yet. The vaccine is slowly making its way through communities, but the virus is spreading faster. We have exceeded 26 million cases and over 450,000 deaths just here in the US. These numbers are just mind-boggling to me. So I hope those of you who are reading this will be cautious about your Valentine’s Day plans.
My plans this year are somewhat interesting. Valentine’s Day happens to fall on an important religious observance, Pethratha. It is a Malayalam word that is derived from Syriac which means “looking back” or reconciliation. It is the day before the Great Lent starts. One of the customary things we do on Pethratha is feast, because for the next month and a half, we (specifically my family) will not have any meat, fish, or egg items. The whole weekend is spent cooking and finishing up all of our non-veg foods; basically eat it so it will not spoil.
If feasting before lent sounds familiar to you, it is probably because you are thinking about Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday. The concept is the same, with some slight differences. The Orthodox (and as far as I know, the Syro-Malabar Catholic) Great Lent starts on Monday. So for us, it is “fat” Sunday. In previous years, there was tons of sharing the cooked food, but who knows how this year will turn out.
In the spirit of Pethratha, the topic of this post will be about reconciliation. There are two types of reconciliation within religion, between us and other people and between us and God. But I would say that there is another reconciliation we need to consider that is just as important: between us and ourselves.
To start off, reconciliation is “the restoration of friendly relations,” according to Google. So when I say that we need to reconcile with ourselves, I am saying we need to go easy on ourselves for our past mistakes and shortcomings. What that looks like will be different for each person, so rather than talking abstractly, I will speak from my personal experience.
One thing I needed to come to terms with was that I am not everyone’s cup of tea. I am weird and quirky and make the strangest observations sometimes. Just for an example, I dyed my hair purple, blue, and green during quarantine. If you are looking for “normal,” that is not me. From my experience, most people are not ready for that kind of strong personality; at least in the long term. In the short term, I can bring new insight and new perspectives, maybe even new experiences. But eventually, it can be draining. People will have their fill and move on with their lives. Or alternatively, I do not find enough fulfilment and I move on. The end result is the same, a connection that has withered away.
Does that mean I will change myself? To be honest, that is a hard question to answer. On the one hand, I do not see the need for change. This might be egocentric, but who I am today is a product of 27 years of actively figuring out who I wanted to be. But on the other hand, the process is not over, I am continuously growing and improving and letting go of values and ideas that I no longer hold or deem necessary. So in that sense, I am changing.
But if the question is will I change myself for other people, then the answer will almost definitely be no. To my knowledge, my personality has not harmed anyone (if I have hurt anyone that is reading this, please let me know. I am truly ignorant that I have done so). It would be one thing if my behavior was harmful. But if it is just incompatible, then that is not so bad.
If I am content with who I am, then why do I need to reconcile with myself? Ah, that is because I am not always content with who I am. It is during those 2am conversations I have with myself as I am falling asleep that I falter in my inner strength. Those are the times I face my harshest critic: myself. Another potential that has gone nowhere. You are not getting any younger. Soon all the decent men will be taken. Clearly no one likes you enough, why don’t you try a different tactic? I have to wonder…are my thoughts right?
Whether my inner thoughts are right or not does not matter. I know I would not be happy in a relationship if I could not be weird and quirky. Why would I give up such an integral part of who I am, just to settle with any partner?
My reconciliation comes with the understanding that loving me means loving all the parts of me (the strange, the broken, the exciting, everything). If that is too much for some people, that is neither their fault nor mine. We are just incompatible.
The analogy that comes to mind is trying to put a square peg into a round hole. The peg is a square (technically a cube, but I won’t go into that right now) and the hole is a circle. Neither are wrong, they just are not made for each other. In this analogy, I do not know whether I am the peg or the hole, but I just need to keep trying until I find someone that is compatible with me. And if I do not find that person, that is fine too. A peg can exist on its own and a hole does not need to be filled. I will be happy however my life turns out.
That is enough of a monologue for this week. Leave a comment below on how you have or want to reconcile with yourself. I would love to know more about my readers. And if you are discovering this far into the future, still leave a comment. Let me know if these posts are still relevant! So until next time.
- Aemi
