Ajit feels unloved and invisible, but nonetheless compelled to prove his worth to his parents by meeting their expectations. Only when he has an emotional heart-to-heart with his father does he realize his true worth.
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FunTranscript
00:00 My wife came into my life and started to ask me,
00:03 "Why is it that you don't talk to your family that often?"
00:07 And I told her the story, like,
00:08 I don't think they love me, I don't think they want me.
00:11 I think they don't appreciate me.
00:12 I don't think they care, honestly.
00:15 So my brother was elder than me, about three years.
00:19 And so the grandparents smother him with love.
00:22 And then my parents smother him with love.
00:23 So he's getting love from everywhere.
00:26 What would happen is often,
00:28 I would be wearing the same clothes that he wore to school.
00:32 Because it was always first used by him,
00:34 I get everything secondhand.
00:36 Say there was a mattress on the floor
00:37 and that was for two people, right?
00:39 That was me and my brother.
00:40 Now, how brothers are,
00:41 me and my brother start fighting for space
00:43 because my brother was bigger than me,
00:45 so he would push me to a corner.
00:46 He would like, "No, I need more space.
00:47 I'm bigger, elder than you."
00:49 And as we were arguing and fighting,
00:51 my mom stormed out of her room and goes,
00:53 "Ajay, go to sleep."
00:55 And I'm like, "But I can't go to sleep.
00:57 I don't have enough space
00:59 and brother's fighting me for the space
01:01 and I can't really sleep in this little space."
01:03 And my mom goes, "No, Ajay, go to sleep."
01:06 I take my pillow and I bury my head into it
01:10 and I start sobbing.
01:11 In India, when somebody is a loved child,
01:17 they call them "Mir Lal,"
01:18 which simply means you're the loved one.
01:20 All the time I used to say, "He's your Lal, I'm your her,"
01:23 which means he's the one that you really love
01:25 and I'm the one that you're indifferent towards
01:27 or you don't care.
01:29 What I was really trying to say is I don't feel the love
01:33 and why am I hated so much?
01:35 Our lives started to change a little bit
01:38 because now I was growing older,
01:40 I was getting into my teens,
01:41 and my brother left the city.
01:43 And as he was moving away,
01:46 the expectations started to rely a lot more on me.
01:49 And so it was constantly told,
01:50 "Hey, go become an engineer.
01:52 You need to go become an engineer.
01:53 You need to study hard so you can become an engineer."
01:56 And as I was studying for these exams,
01:58 as I was preparing for these exams,
01:59 I realized that if what I'm studying right now
02:03 is what I have to do for the next four years
02:06 or for the rest of my life,
02:08 I'm going to be miserable.
02:10 And that kind of gave me a dimension of saying,
02:11 "Hey, why am I doing this?
02:13 I am doing this because my mom says so."
02:16 I've taken many chances in life after that
02:20 and every time I would take a chance,
02:22 it would seem like the stupid thing to do,
02:24 but I will constantly take them
02:25 because I just knew that what I really wanted was,
02:29 "I need to be successful.
02:30 I need to get out of this house."
02:31 And I was able to do that by the time I was 28, 29.
02:35 Seven years later, what I'm realizing on the inside
02:45 is that my health was deteriorating.
02:47 I couldn't sleep without a drink.
02:48 I had grown even more distant to my parents.
02:51 It was almost like a,
02:53 you know, it's like a task that you check off.
02:55 I'm like, "I should call mom at least once a week."
02:58 That would be one of those things
02:59 where I'm actually doing something else
03:01 while she's on speaker, right?
03:03 There was no connection.
03:04 My wife came into my life and started to ask me,
03:09 "Why is it that you don't talk to your family that often?"
03:12 And I told her the story.
03:13 Like, "I don't think they love me.
03:15 I don't think they want me.
03:16 I think they don't appreciate me.
03:18 I don't think they care, honestly."
03:20 She kind of said, "Why don't we do this?"
03:23 We were going to India just to travel.
03:26 And she was like, "Why don't we go together?
03:29 And why don't you bring your parents on
03:30 and bring your brother and your sister-in-law
03:33 and their kids to come together?
03:35 And we'll go to like a retreat center
03:36 and just hang out for a couple of days,
03:38 like just four or five days, just hang out."
03:40 And I was like, "Well, I have never done that."
03:43 We haven't hung out since ever, probably.
03:48 And so we bring the family together.
03:50 We find this retreat center close to the city
03:52 that I'm from, Jaipur, and we all go there.
03:55 And one of the evenings,
03:56 and this was, I think, the second to the last evening,
03:58 where my now wife and then girlfriend suggested,
04:02 "Hey, Ajit, we are here.
04:04 This is the time you can actually have a conversation
04:06 about this that we've been talking about."
04:09 And we're sitting all across the table, the same table,
04:11 and I start sharing.
04:14 I start sharing.
04:15 More than me sharing,
04:17 it was more a question for the table.
04:18 It was like, "Okay, what is it that we feel about each other?
04:21 Let's share some honest truths about each other
04:23 and what we're proud of, what our concerns are," so forth.
04:26 And my turn comes and I say,
04:29 "I've never felt loved by mom and dad."
04:34 And they were right there.
04:35 And I've never felt that bonding and that connection.
04:40 And they listened very quietly.
04:42 And they listened very quietly.
04:45 They listened and hear me all out.
04:47 And then my dad asked me a question.
04:50 And the question was, "Ajit, you have two hands, right?"
04:53 I'm like, "Yes."
04:54 "Like, your right hand and the left hand,
04:56 which one do you love more?"
04:57 And I was like, "Both of them.
05:00 I mean, there's not one hand that I love more."
05:03 And so he said, "That's like having kids.
05:06 You don't love one of your hands more
05:08 and you don't love one of your kids more.
05:10 But when one of your hand is in some pain,
05:14 you just pay attention to it.
05:15 You have to, because it's in pain right now.
05:18 But as soon as it's healed,
05:19 you don't pay attention to it anymore.
05:21 You treat them equally.
05:22 You love them equally."
05:24 In the moment, it was just a metaphor,
05:27 but it became my truth eventually.
05:30 That it's not that somebody loves you
05:32 or somebody doesn't love you, especially parents.
05:35 It's not that you love somebody or don't love somebody.
05:37 In context, for example, me getting an oversized shirt
05:42 wasn't about they loved my brother.
05:47 It was about them not being able
05:48 to afford new shirts all the time.
05:51 Me getting the secondhand bicycle
05:54 wasn't about them not wanting to give me a new bicycle,
05:58 but it was about them being able
06:00 to only afford one bicycle at a time.
06:01 That was a big release for me
06:05 because I had held on to that for all of my life.
06:12 And I was driven from a place of, "I'll show you."
06:15 Only recently, when we actually had a child,
06:18 I realized that as much power the word love has,
06:23 it doesn't do justice to what you feel when you have a child.
06:30 What I have for my son, I can't explain.
06:32 I can't explain because it transcends love.
06:36 It's important that we know how loved we are.
06:40 The fact that we take up space means something,
06:42 that we are worthy of love, giving and receiving.
06:45 And that no matter who we are,
06:49 the way we show up in the world is deserving of love.
06:53 And if ever you feel unloved,
06:56 remember that all you need to do is change your perspective
07:00 for love is always there.
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