hi everyone so many years ago I made a commitment as you may already know to
live more authentically which I talked about my book called The Authenticity
Principle and I dug deep into exploring how it was that as an adult I had been
pushing down aspects of my childhood my childhood upbringing not talking about
aspects of my upbringing because I was afraid of bias and judgment of others
and one of the things that I learned is that through that exploration is that I
had grown up feeling really uncomfortable about talking about the
fact that I essentially grew up in a in an immigrant upbringing and in an in an
immigrant household where my parents had immigrated to Canada from India 45 years
ago and I was shy embarrassed reluctant to talk about things to do with that but
as part of me living more authentically I committed to myself to hell with that
oppression I'm gonna start being true to my roots and be really proud of who I am
and talk about it and I started to do that and as I started to talk more and
more about my upbringing I had another aha which is this that I as someone who
deeply cares about environmentalism and I'm very committed to protecting and
saving the environment am an environmentalist not just because I care
about the earth but more importantly because my parents as immigrants to the
country were raging environmentalists growing up they just didn't know that
but they just didn't actually know that in their efforts to reuse things and
save things and cut down on waste and essentially to be frugal to save money
they were helping to save the environment and so in my humble opinion
now as I sit here immigrants are the original environmentalists so I was born
in 1975 I'm 42 years old and in the 70s is really when environmentalism took off
like I remember in like grade two or three doing a project on acid rain
and we were talking about the planets and saving the earth even back then but
you'll remember it was really in the 80s in Canada in the u.s. that the slogan
reduce reuse and recycle came to be so here are my thoughts about immigrants
and that slogan in my humble opinion being raised by immigrant parents and
then going to many immigrant homes as a child and even now the immigrant
community has the corner we have we win the prize for reduce and reuse we were
actually pretty crappy at recycling um although my parents are really good at
it I go to people's houses all the time and
I'll look in their garbages and they'll have a cans aluminum cans and jars and
I'll like freak out I'll be like why are you not recycling and it's like oh do
people really recycle and like it doesn't really work and they don't really
take it to the fills and whatever landfills and whatever whatever anyhow
we could do better as an immigrant community to work on the recycling
aspect but we are really good at reducing and reusing and in fact when I
think about my childhood experience like there's so many examples of how my
parents were on it so let's start with the kitchen in the kitchen the they were
really good at reusing and when I say reusing we used to reuse foil like
wipe it down reuse it again we would wash out Ziploc Ziploc bags and one of
my personal favorites was and I say this sarcastically because I really actually did
not enjoy it is the reusing of sour cream containers as Tupperware and so it
was not only reusing but it was also reducing because they wouldn't buy
Tupperware they would use sour cream containers as Tupperware so that's what
was happening in the kitchen more or less in the bathrooms
instead of taking showers we would do what is called a bucket bath or in
Punjabi a balti bath and in fact in Punjabi we would call it an "ik dhaba here, ik dhaba there"
bath and so combined English and Punjabi and what that
essentially meant is that we would have a bucket in the tub we would fill the
tub with water you would get one bucket of water and there'd be a scoop in there
maybe a sour cream container as the scoop or just a plastic scoop and you'd
get like a scoop of water until the bucket was empty and then you had had your bath
now when I started babysitting around the age of eleven for kids in my city
growing up in my town grow up Unionville Ontario and you've probably heard me
talk about my experiences on my ethnic identity crisis video when I started
babysitting for the white families in my neighborhood I remember the first time I
went to someone's house a white family's house and the mom filled the entire
bathtub with water and I was looking at her going what are you doing and she's
like oh we fill the bathtub with water and I was like you fill the whole
bathtub with water that's not what we did at our household no that's not what
we did in our household is fill a bucket reducing in the bathroom in the bedroom
let's talk about clothing I have pictures from my childhood I wish I
could have dug them up for today but I have pictures from my childhood where I
as the eldest child in my family had someone gave me this blue t-shirt with
this hologram print on it of trucks don't know why but there it is and I I
wore this t-shirt and then three to four years later my sister wore the t-shirt
and my brother who's 7 years younger than me 10 years later was wearing the
t-shirt so that t-shirt got passed through three children by the time my
brother wore it though in the pictures the hologram the trucks you couldn't really see
it it just like looked like this mishmash of sparkles another thing that we did
with clothing my fa--I can remember my father's jeans once they got frayed at
the bottom being turned into shorts for him so jean shorts for him and then we
took the pant leg and I believe it or not as a child learned to sew and knit
and crochet which I learned from my father by the way not my mother
from my father breaking gender norms in the Bhasin household and I then as part
of learning from my parents to reduce and reuse turned my parent uh turned
my father's leftover jean pants into pencil cases for my siblings and I and I
even even made bows for the back of my hair and I got the clips from like a
store and I sewed the clip onto the jean bow and matching scrunchies I did that
because that was part of my environmentalism as a child which I learned
from my parents and I mean I could go on and on heating in the house and like
either the heat being on timers and it really only being turned on for the
three hours we were home in the evening and awake and then like having to use a
lot of heavy Punjabi style blankets and sweaters and how that was horrible and
the first time I moved out and I could control my own heat
I had the heat jacked as high as possible anyhow I literally could go on
and on I think my one of the greatest learning lessons I have had in
exploring my parents' environments environmentalism and really more about
my journey living in a household run by immigrants is that years and years ago I
would have felt so uncomfortable sharing my lived experience as a child I would
have been embarrassed by a lot of what I am now sharing whereas now I feel so
proud about who I am and my roots and how I grew up and it's part of my
authentic living and so firstly I want to say shout out to my parents thank you
so much for teaching me to be an environmentalist because I deeply care
about saving the earth and I think everyone should so thank you for that
and I want to say to you for those of you watching if as I have been speaking
my story is resonating for you throw your parents some props to celebrate
immigrants don't hate thank you as always for listening if you have
comments to share you can do so below if you're watching on YouTube please
subscribe to my channel and hit me up on all the social media platforms you can
direct message me and I look forward to responding thanks again
For more infomation >> The best natural remedies to reduce triglycerides | Natural Health - Duration: 5:30. 
For more infomation >> 'Are You Serious?' Southwest Flight Diverted After Passenger Joins Mile-High Weed Club - Duration: 0:40. 
For more infomation >> Only Side by Side With You (南方有乔木) - Episode 38 [Eng Subs] | Chinese Drama - Duration: 45:13. 
For more infomation >> 十二生肖六月最佳運勢分析 - Duration: 15:22. 
For more infomation >> 5月31號，這三大生肖財運亨通~ - Duration: 6:16. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét