ROOTS OR WINGS

finding the balance

By Christine Jayakaran

I was watching one of my favourite movies just today, 'Sweet Home Alabama' and this one line from the film got my attention. To give you a bit of background, the film's lead actor, Reese Witherspoon is having an emotional crisis of feeling torn between her hometown of Alabama and her place of work and a new start, New York.

Her husband says to her “Since when does it have to be one or the other?

You can have roots and wings”

BAM !! What a line !! It so got me thinking...

I was at a family get together last night and on looking at the pictures we clicked at the event I realized just how grateful for my roots. Yes... like all good families we infuriate and embarrass each other but at the end of the day we are blood. We sharpen each other, make each other better and bring a bit of heaven into each others lives at the most unexpected times. I then looked closer at the picture of our children, all the little ones scrambling around excitedly and without any prejudices or inhibitions. I watched how my cousins and us were bringing them up and realized that we all had sprouted wings. We had moved out of our homes, discovered the world, loved, lost, recovered and were moving towards newer horizons. We had the best of both worlds. We loved our families, our heritage and our culture but we were not allowing that to define and constrain us. Instead we are stepping into spaces that our parents would never dream of stepping into.

We are introducing our children to things we were never introduced to. And we are experiencing God in very novel and exciting ways.

Where do you find yourself on this journey? Are your roots so deep and strong that you are almost stuck in sinking sand or are you so free and wild that you are unaware of your reality and are dangerously close to crash landing?

I encourage you to think long and deep on this.. will you start living your life with the best of both worlds?

Be proud of your heritage and where you come from, no matter what others or you even have defined that to be. Live your life free from being fettered by others opinions and the boxes that people have placed you in. Let others also live free from your prejudice, your opinions or your preconceived notions.