Excerpts from the Speech of Ms. Parveen Gill
When I was a child I had this secret desire to be a male child and not a female child but as I started growing up I started feeling that I am the chosen one. What a blessing to be a woman and you can contribute so much to the entire world by spreading the smile, the peace and the joy.
When my daughter was 17 days old, I tried my first teaching assignment. There was a lot of opposition from in laws, parents on why would I want to work when my daughter is only 17 days old. Opposition was more on account of what would society say? What would people say? But I said she would always be a small baby for me and for her betterment, I need to have the exposure, be financially independent and go out and work. And that was it. I never looked back. I started my first teaching assignment, started going back and forth with corporate and teaching. Both in India and in Toronto, Canada, the journey has been immense and I never ever realized how many lives I have touched until my students got back to me and said this is what you said or this is how you helped that actually inspired us.
My topic today is Sailing Through Opposites- Be Natural. What opposites do we talk about? I teach business and in the capitalist society when you are on the spiritual path, teaching business is really challenging. Sometimes you feel that you don’t really believe in what you are teaching but then, you have to teach that. So how do you keep your balance and how do you keep the harmony within yourself so that you can convey that to your students? So that approach is what I want to discuss and share with all of you because we have been talking about education.
For me, opposites have always co-existed. When we complain, why do we complain? Why don’t we just feel gratitude for whatever we have? If we just start feeling grateful, life becomes so much easier. When we do not complain, the same negative elements do not exist. We talk about compassion, authority, collaboration and these are the words I use in my classes because I teach business and human resources. The idea here is, these are opposites but they coexist both in our personal as well as our professional and business life. What is the meaning of meaningless and meaningful? I lost my 27 yr old nephew on Christmas night. I was talking to my class on Jan 26th and I was in so much pain inside and here I was talking to them about 6 degrees of separation and ice breaking and I asked them what do you know about me? A few undergraduate students came forward and said you are a happy person by default and that happened because I could maintain my harmony in opposites. The harmony in me is happening because I have started living in knowledge. I have started practicing to live knowledge a little bit here and there every day. This is helping me to be more and more natural every day and I feel connected with everyone.
Another thing happened in my life which you might call a challenge but I would call it experience. In 2005, when I was about to be 40, I decided to migrate to Canada. People were wondering why I wanted to do this when I was so well settled here and enjoying a luxurious life. But I wanted to explore the world. So my daughter and I went there in 2005 with 2 suitcases and started living in a basement apartment and I was looking at my daughter and thinking that if she can adjust, why can’t I? And our journey started from scratch. To cut a long story short, I went back to school and people would wonder why with a Phd, I would want to go back to a certification. But education is not at all about degrees. It is all about human values. How much we carry, how much we absorb and how much we can actually spread around the world. I have had amazing experience so far in spite of the challenges there.
So my message today in terms of education is we don’t have to do it in bulk but just touch one soul at a time and that lifts the consciousness so very well. That is what we need to do and being women, we are the chosen ones and we can do it in a very subtle but very profound way.
Thank you so very much.
