Revision history [back]

I recently got the chance to move to univeristy and live on campus and now live a double life. To be completely honest, after grade 11 highschool, I stopped caring about sikihi as much as I did before. And please do not try to convince to go back being a full-fledged sikh, cus that is not my question here.

As a little kid, my parents put me into khalsa school. They were both amritdhari, but were constantly at work, but they wanted me to have sikh values. As a kid, you are simply told to believe in something so you do. So basically, in grade 8, my parents got me to take amrit. It was not forced or anything, they just suggested I do it and I went ahead with it. As a child, I was very much into sikhi, did kirtan, attended gatka classes etc. and I enjoyed it. As I grew older, I started to find it very tedious to keep up with the rehat (always wearing kirpan, waking up early etc) and did not enjoy adhering to those rules as much. On top of that, I had non-sikh friends that were living free lives (they obviously did not have to follow any rehat). Let me make one thing clear, although my friends were non-sikh and non-religious, they never pressured me into doing anything against my religion. They were always very accepting of me and we had good times together. To stray away from sikhi was my own personal decision and not anybody else's influence.

I began trim my beard a little bit in grade 10 and my parents very quickly noticed and caught on. I had to confess to them after lying about for months and my whole family was devastated. Mom was crying, dad was highly dissapointed and my sisters (one of them is amritdhari) was very dissapointed at me. My mom and my dad are both amritdhari and veryy religious, and honestly, I'm proud of them for adhering to sikhi so closely. So after finding out about this, I had to re-take amrit (very well knowing that I would cut my hair again) and all was good for about a year.

Then in Grade 11-12 summer, I started eating meat and occasionally drank alcohol. That is where it all changed for me. Obviously these worldly desires won't last me forever, and I know sikhi is the righteous path to follow, but I am a young guy in his late teens. I wanna live the life of the typical college student and enjoy life. I do not find it very "fun" or even "enlightening" to sit down for an hour every morning and do nitnem. I have also started trimming my beard a little bit again, but parents don't really notice because it is so long now. Whenever I go out with my friends, I eat meat.

Even by doing all that, I am not an atheist that is opposed to sikhi. I know that being a true sikh is the right thing to do, but I simply do not want to have to all the rules that go along with that. Amritvela, doing nitnem, keeping my hair etc. Now most you might be thinking I want to become a complete mona and cut all my hair. No. I still want to keep my dastaar because it is a part of who I am. I still have some pride in a being a sikh/punjabi (not using those words synonymously) and want to retain that by keeping my pagh. I just want to be able to style/trim my beard (cuz I think it looks nice). Sure there is a hypocrisy in that, but ultimately what I am trying to say is that, I want to live my life the way I want to without being held down by anything.

Now the purpose of all this you might ask? I need to tell my parents about this. Because when I am at home away from university, I behave like a full fledged amritdhari sikh (no meat in the house, doing my nitnem etc), but the moment I go out with friends I turn into the person that I really want to be. I am very dissatisfied with living such a life because I do like having to lie my parents everytime they ask me about stuff. And this double life situation has been going on for about a year now.

You already heard what happened in the past when my family found out about me cutting my hair, the whole drama, but I just want my parents to accept for me who I am. HOW DO I TELL MY PARENTS ABOUT THE DOUBLE LIFE I LEAD??