HOW DO I TELL MY PARENTS ABOUT THE DOUBLE LIFE I LEAD??
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 ...
