While I was growing up, I almost drowned many times. But it was the very first time this happened, when I was two years old, that I would have drowned for a good reason. This experience of almost drowning is so memorable for me, not because of my young age, but because of the faith that led me to jump in the water.
I am told by my parents that no one was home that day but my sick aunt, my older cousins (then ages 3 and 4) and I. We were playing loudly, as do all little kids, and we were sent out to the pool side by my aunt to wash the dirty dishes left from that morning's meal. The dishes were divided by family. Each one of us had to wash our own family’s dishes. Since I had the smallest family, I had my grandparents' dishes too. Doing the dishes that day by the pool side taught me many lessons that I didn’t realize until many years after the incident. Those lessons were ones of honor and of not giving up and having faith.
As the youngest, I was honored to be given the dishes to do alongside my cousins. I did not complain once but ran to do the task at hand. I was just so honored to be allowed to do the dishes with my cousins that I didn’t even see that I had been given many more dishes. Looking back today, I think of the injustice done to me, but I don’t always realize why it didn’t seem like an injustice to me at the time. I see a small child being asked to do work she wasn’t capable of and often fail to see the honor that child felt to be able to do something for her family, standing proudly with her cousins and being able to say that she had done the dishes too. Today that hat forces me to think of why that child could take on a large task and why I am unable to the same now. Why do I feel too small to do anything for my own family, the Sikh Panth?
Back at the pool side I imagine myself looking at my tiny hands as I watched my cousins finish and leave to go play again. I could have run off to play with them and left my remaining dishes where they were, but the honor I felt didn’t allow me to give up. As my cousins played, I worked faster to finish my job. At that age when something gets stuck in your brain, it becomes stuck there for a good while. There was no way I would leave without finishing my assigned job!
Now, looking back, I feel a bit foolish and proud for not giving up. But at same time I wonder if I could do what I did then today. There seem to be a million distractions that keep me from doing the right thing in the first place and if I do start the task, a million more come along to throw me off task. Without that childlike innocence, focus and determination, how can we accomplish anything in today’s day and age? Every time I think of doing something for the Sikh Panth, I see myself too small to do anything effective, and held back from doing anything by a million distractions. Why?
I can’t accomplish the same thing I did as the child Sanmukh because I lack her faith.
It was her faith that nothing would happen to her that allowed her to jump in the water to get the final dish that had slipped from her soapy hand into the pool. When my aunt rescued me from the water, she asked me a simple question, “why?”
I am told that I frowned at her and said, “Kamali, The water was too slippery and I couldn’t grab it to pull myself up.”
My parents never let me forget this story because they find it very amusing that I thought that the water was too slippery. But to me it is intriguing more than amusing, because I had faith that I would certainly find my way out of the pool and finish my job. 
Today I know Waheguru Ji exists and is there for me but I still shy away from taking leaps of faith. "What if He doesn’t save me?" Then I think, "how can someone so small, who is held back by a million things, ever do something worthwhile for the Sikh Panth without faith?
I look back at myself and wonder where did my sense of honor, my will power and my faith go?
I pray to Waheguru Ji to return that innocence and pure mind that I had at age of two, so I can once again be capable of doing something for the honor of my family... and this time it must be something for my bigger family, the Khalsa Panth.
