Rian Nejar

Humbling and Humility Rian Nejar 1st edition

Humbling and Humility narrates the triumph of truth, the victory of peace in the midst of turmoil, and the dawn of enlightenment in the darkness of familial and cultural conflict. It is a personal journey of an Indian American father and husband through betrayal, by his partner in life and the mother of his children, his punishment in the grip of an uncaring legal system, his untold suffering, and a growing comprehension of the principal and defining duty of a parent in life. Through numerous true life events of the present, it explores aspects of eastern and western culture, providing a critical view, from an immigrant father's perspective, of freedom and restraint advocated and practiced. It is a heartfelt call for a return to family and community, and to a true purpose in life. Beginning with detailed accounts of domestic discord, humiliation, and learning for men, attending court-ordered domestic violence intervention classes, the narrative explores the emotional struggles of a father due to infidelity by his partner, and his helplessness, as he observes his family disintegrate, despite his humility and sincere efforts toward reconciliation. Finding the tools and methods of contemporary society inadequate to his family's needs, he learns to apply his fundamental learning from culture, and the way of life that guided him in his early years. Discovering pathways of non-violence, tolerance, and accommodation, he applies renewed learning to assist other such families in distress, who find non-litigious and selfless means to resolve differences. Yet, he struggles with the confusion and conflict his own children undergo in the dislocation of their lives between two distinct cultures. He finds a measure of peace in the very act of documenting his struggle, and his comprehension of truth in the journey. In addition to numerous mini-stories in domestic violence intervention, Humbling and Humility explores parallels of this immigrant father's predicament with that of other immigrant and non-immigrant families in contemporary American society. Finding many commonalities in such parallel incidents and lives, it seeks to explore root causes of such social conflict, and of social ills generally, deriving knowledge and wisdom from the two disparate democratic cultures immigrants gain from. Integrating values from both ways of life into one's consciousness, a glimpse of a primacy of family, and of one's true purpose in life, is inescapable in stories within. It is thus a complex tapestry of interwoven tales, an inseparable thread of which is enlightenment, of a troubled and resolute human mind, through the crucible of great suffering and joy that life is. Spanning many years of an immigrant father's life and learning, and enriched by raw and honest depictions of countless true life events, Humbling and Humility aspires to that ancient wisdom from the Mundakopanishad, ?Satyameva Jayate,? that it is only truth that wins.