The Light We Give

The Light We Give Plot Summary

Introduction

Living with a beard and turban as a Sikh in America presents a unique set of challenges. Simran Jeet Singh, who was born and raised in Texas, has experienced firsthand how people perceive him with fear and suspicion. From being called a terrorist at age eleven to facing racial profiling at airports, Singh's distinctive appearance has made him a target of prejudice. Yet through these experiences, he has discovered powerful ways to maintain dignity, find joy, and spread love in the face of hate. Singh's journey illuminates how Sikh wisdom can transform not only his life but anyone's. Drawing from centuries-old teachings of interconnectedness, selfless service, and radical optimism, he shows us paths to happiness that transcend our divided society. Through personal stories and timeless insights, we learn how to cultivate empathy in a culture of outrage, maintain integrity when our values are tested, and find courage to love even those who show us hate. Singh's narrative offers a refreshing alternative to our culture's emphasis on materialism and division—reminding us that true fulfillment comes not from what we have, but from how we connect with and serve one another.

Chapter 1: Growing Up Visible Yet Unseen: A Sikh Journey in Texas

Simran Jeet Singh was born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1984 to parents who had emigrated from Punjab, India. His family was one of the few Sikh families in South Texas, making them immediately noticeable in their community. From age three, Singh wore a turban, a visible marker of his Sikh faith. While this distinct appearance made him hypervisible, it paradoxically rendered him unseen as people rarely understood who he truly was. Growing up in Texas, Singh and his three brothers immersed themselves in American culture—playing sports, trading basketball cards, and enjoying typical childhood activities. Yet they faced constant questions and comments about their appearance. As Singh recalls, they became accustomed to answering people's inquiries about "that thing" on their heads, explaining that it covered their uncut hair as part of their Sikh faith. Their mother would visit their schools to give presentations about Punjabi and Sikh culture, helping classmates understand their background. Despite these educational efforts, the brothers encountered regular discrimination. In preschool, other boys insisted Singh had to play the princess during playtime because of his long hair. In elementary school, older students pushed him out of the boys' bathroom, saying he could only use the girls' bathroom until his hair was short. When his older brother began middle school, classmates called him "Diaper Head." Their parents advised them to ignore such teasing, suggesting that while they couldn't control how others treated them, they could control their responses. The brothers developed their own methods for dealing with prejudice. They learned to use humor, crafting witty responses to common stereotypes. When playing basketball at unfamiliar courts, they would sometimes play into people's assumptions, speaking to each other in Punjabi and hiking their shorts comically high—then surprising everyone with their athletic skills. This blend of resilience and humor helped them navigate their unique position in American society. Everything changed on September 11, 2001, when Singh was a high school senior. As he watched the Twin Towers fall in his social studies classroom, he immediately understood that life would become much more difficult for his family. That same day, death threats began coming to their home. For the next two weeks, they stayed home as threatening phone calls continued and strangers drove by their house yelling angry threats. Yet Singh also witnessed another side of America—neighbors, classmates, and even strangers checking on their wellbeing, bringing food and flowers. This pivotal moment transformed Singh's approach to dealing with racism. It wasn't enough to ignore prejudice or deflect it with humor. With people in his community being attacked and even killed, confronting hate became a matter of survival. Singh moved from being merely non-racist to actively anti-racist, committed to challenging bigotry wherever he encountered it. At seventeen, he realized he could no longer be a passive observer of his own life—he needed to become its author.

Chapter 2: Finding Ik Oankar: The Transformative Power of Connection

The Oak Creek massacre in 2012, when a white supremacist murdered seven Sikhs at a Wisconsin gurdwara, forced Singh to confront profound questions about hate, fear, and how to maintain his own humanity. In the days after the shooting, Singh found himself consumed by anger toward the killer, Wade Michael Page. This internal struggle intensified when he realized that while publicly calling for peace and unity, he privately felt fury that innocent people were dead because of one man's hatred. This contradiction troubled Singh deeply. Having devoted his life to fighting hate with love, he was devastated to discover that he had fallen into hate's clutches. The turning point came unexpectedly while speaking with Sikh children at a summer camp. When a young girl described Page as "evil," Singh recognized his own language reflected back at him. This jarring moment revealed how he had been dehumanizing someone who had dehumanized his community—reproducing the very supremacy he condemned. Standing before these children, Singh returned to the fundamental Sikh concept of ik oankar—the belief that everything and everyone is connected by the same divine light. This concept teaches that the Creator is in the Creation and the Creation in the Creator, completely permeating all spaces. If the divine light exists in everyone, then it existed even in someone like Page. One girl at the camp articulated this profound idea simply: "I think the killer had Vahiguru (divinity) inside of him, but he chose to ignore God and so he did a bad thing." This perspective sparked a transformation in Singh's thinking. He began to understand that while dehumanizing someone we dislike might feel natural, it becomes a heavy and useless burden. The insight of radical connection—seeing the shared humanity even in those who harm us—became a key to his healing. Singh realized that hate had no power over him when he recognized that, despite their vast differences, he and Page were both manifestations of the same divine force. Singh then embarked on a practice to expand his capacity for empathy. He committed to making one meaningful human connection each day, moving beyond superficial commonalities to find true connection. As he practiced seeing humanity in people he met, he began noticing it everywhere, even in strangers. This practice transformed him so completely that when teenagers shouted racist slurs at him while he was jogging, his instinctive response was compassion rather than anger. Instead of ignoring them or responding with hostility, he approached the young man who had yelled at him and engaged in a conversation that created a moment of understanding. Through this journey, Singh discovered that radical connection doesn't mean ignoring our differences. Rather, it means celebrating the diverse manifestations of our shared essence. As he explains, "We don't have to look through diversity to find our oneness; rather, we can see oneness through our diversity." This approach enables us to honor both our unique identities and our fundamental interconnectedness, offering a path beyond the polarization that characterizes our contemporary world.

Chapter 3: From Connection to Love: Expanding Our Capacity to Care

When Singh's first daughter was born, he experienced a kind of love that felt entirely new. The intensity of his feelings made him question whether he had ever truly known love before. This jarring realization led him to explore the dimensions and depths of love in human experience. He discovered that the English word "love" flattens the complexities of this emotion, while languages like Punjabi use multiple terms to capture its nuances. Looking deeper into Sikh teachings, Singh found wisdom about expanding our capacity for love beyond conventional boundaries. The story of Guru Tegh Bahadur, the ninth Sikh guru, exemplifies this expansive love. In the 17th century, when Kashmiri Hindus were being persecuted, they came to Guru Tegh Bahadur for help. Though he was not Hindu and his community was not being targeted, he spoke out on their behalf. For this act of solidarity, he was imprisoned, tortured, and executed. He gave his life defending religious liberty for people he had never met. Singh realized that this story, which he had heard countless times since childhood, was fundamentally a love story. Guru Tegh Bahadur showed what it truly means to love—to love oneself, one's people, and the stranger. His sacrifice revealed the essence of selfless love: "Love is unconditional, not contingent. Love is selfless, not self-centered. Love is ever giving, not transactional." This understanding helped Singh recognize the limitations of his own love before becoming a parent—a calculated and selfish love where he weighed personal costs and benefits. The deeper love that came with fatherhood helped Singh glimpse how his love could expand further. If the selfless love he felt for his daughters could be extended to people he didn't know, what might that mean for his life and for society? He found inspiration in activists like Heather Heyer, who gave her life standing against white supremacy, and humanitarians like Ravi Singh of Khalsa Aid, who routinely puts his life on the line to serve refugees around the world. Singh discovered that expanding our capacity to love requires training and practice. Just as we expand our lungs by breathing deeper, we can expand our hearts through intentional practices. He began cultivating connection through meditation, setting aside thirty minutes daily to sit in silence. This practice not only brought him peace but helped him live in the present rather than worrying about the future or dwelling on the past. When feeling overwhelmed by negative news, he learned to pause, turn inward, and reconnect with the broader perspective that comes from feeling connected to all life. This ability to maintain connection amid difficulty is exemplified by Guru Arjan, who upon being tortured sang: "Your Will is so sweet to me." When a Sufi saint asked how he could experience torture as anything other than suffering, Guru Arjan replied that in love, everything is beautiful. His physical body was in pain, but his heart and mind remained connected to love. This is what we mean when we say "Love endures" and "Love conquers all"—not empty platitudes but forceful convictions derived from witnessing love withstand extreme duress.

Chapter 4: Living Our Values: Cultivating Integrity in Everyday Life

The COVID-19 pandemic forced Singh, like many of us, to confront the gap between his stated priorities and how he actually lived. When quarantined at home with his two young daughters while his wife served as a physician on the frontlines, Singh experienced a moment of clarity. Despite always claiming that family came first, his daily schedule revealed that work was his true priority. This realization was painful but transformative. To gain this perspective, Singh imagined himself observed by aliens who were studying human behavior. "What does your daily schedule look like? What do you do? What do you consume? What do you think about?" he asked himself. The answer was clear: While he believed family was his top priority, his actions showed otherwise. Even when spending time with his family, part of his mind was often preoccupied with work. There was a significant gap between who he was and who he thought he was—a discord that had been causing him internal pain. This misalignment between values and behaviors is a common source of unhappiness. Singh explains that many spiritual traditions identify this internal disconnection as the greatest source of our discontent. When we say one thing but do another, we create dissonance within ourselves that leads to frustration and shame. The path to authentic happiness lies in aligning our thoughts, speech, and actions—achieving what Singh calls "integrity." Finding integrity requires first acknowledging the disconnect within ourselves. Too often, we bury uncomfortable truths with comforting lies until we no longer believe these falsehoods exist. The solution isn't merely setting new goals but developing a framework for living by our values each day. Singh shares how his family created a values document when he was a teenager, articulating their core principles: faith, integrity, love, service, and excellence. Years later, he still consults this document daily when making decisions. Values-based living proved its worth when Singh faced a campaign to have him fired from Trinity University in Texas, where he taught Islamic studies. When people accused him of making hateful statements online, university administrators reviewed his social media history and found he consistently posted about two topics: love and justice. His clear sense of values had protected him in a moment of crisis. Singh reflects: "A values-based approach to life is like a compass, both clarifying and instructive." The most powerful aspect of living by one's values is how it transforms ideals into embodied qualities. Through consistent practice, values become intrinsic to who we are. Singh illustrates this through his mother's example when, as children, they were denied entry to a skating rink because of their turbans. Rather than giving in or responding with anger, his mother maintained her principles while finding the positive in the situation—the solidarity shown by other parents and teachers who joined them in protest. Her fortitude in that moment showed Singh how idealized values come to life through practice. This kind of authentic living leads to what Singh calls "the ultimate form of self-love." When we embody our values, we no longer feel insecure about ourselves or how others perceive us. We're freed from self-doubt and disappointment, finding instead lasting happiness in living with integrity. As Singh puts it: "Values can be learned. Qualities have to be earned."

Chapter 5: Seva as Service: Using Our Light to Transform the World

The Sikh concept of seva—selfless service rooted in love—offers a powerful alternative to contemporary models of activism and charity. Unlike approaches focused solely on outcomes or personal recognition, seva integrates intentions, process, and results. It transforms both the world around us and our inner selves. As Singh explains, "Seva is justice work that feeds our souls and nourishes our hearts, a way to bring more happiness to others while also firmly planting the seeds for our own long-term happiness." During the COVID-19 pandemic, Singh struggled with feeling ineffective while his physician wife served on the frontlines. Despite caring for their young children at home, he felt guilty for not doing more. This discomfort stemmed from his bias that activism meant being physically present and visible. A note he found reminded him of advice he often gave to students: "Don't confuse activity for activism." This insight helped him recognize how his view of service had become self-centered, focused more on his own feelings of usefulness than on what others actually needed. True seva, Singh realized, means decentering oneself and centering those being served. This perspective differs fundamentally from the Golden Rule—"Do unto others as you would have done unto you"—which assumes others want what we want. Seva instead calls us to "Do unto others as they would want," requiring us to listen and connect authentically with those we seek to help. This approach avoids the pitfalls of colonialism and paternalism, where well-intentioned people impose their ideas of what's best on others. Singh illustrates this principle through the story of Bhagat Puran Singh, a humanitarian who devoted his life to caring for the sick, disabled, and destitute in India. Every morning, despite his advanced age, Bhagat Puran Singh would walk through the streets of Amritsar picking up trash. When people questioned why he continued this seemingly futile effort in a still-polluted city, he would smile and explain: "It may not make a difference to you, but it makes a difference to me. My aim is to leave this world better than how I found it." This story captures the essence of seva: it's about the ethic, attitudes, and intentions behind service as much as the actions themselves. While our current culture rewards "performance outrage"—public displays of concern that require little investment—seva demands authentic engagement. Singh contrasts this with social media culture, where announcing our positions on issues often substitutes for meaningful action. "When our activism is without creativity, and when our outrage is not grounded in true love and connection with those in need, our actions will inevitably be short-lived," he writes. The practice of seva offers liberation from this cycle of superficial engagement. It provides a framework for confronting injustice without internalizing anger and hatred. Like the lantern in Jaswant Singh Khalra's parable, which insisted on challenging darkness in its own small corner, seva empowers us to take action based on what is within our control, to accept what we cannot change, and to keep our lights burning in the face of darkness.

Chapter 6: Challenging Darkness: Meeting Hate with Radical Compassion

Throughout his life, Singh has faced situations that tested his commitment to responding to hate with love. During a cross-country race in high school, a referee demanded to pat down Singh's turban, asking, "Hey, little terrorist! You're not hiding bombs or knives in there, are you?" As an eleven-year-old, Singh complied out of fear and pragmatism. Less than a year later, when a basketball teammate made a similar comment and yanked off his turban, Singh responded with physical violence. Neither reaction—submission nor aggression—brought him satisfaction or resolution. These early experiences illustrate what Singh calls the fight-or-flight trap. Neither fighting back nor avoiding confrontation adequately addresses prejudice or brings inner peace. Through years of grappling with such incidents, Singh developed a third approach—one that maintains dignity while also creating opportunities for human connection. This method draws from the Sikh tradition of meeting hate with radical compassion and seeing the humanity in everyone, even those who wish to harm us. Singh's father-in-law, Satpal Singh, exemplifies this approach. In 1984, during anti-Sikh violence in India, Satpal was attacked by a mob on a train. As men began beating him, believing him dead, they threw his body onto the tracks. In that moment, facing his own mortality, Satpal prayed not only for his family's wellbeing but also for the peace of those attacking him. When Singh asked what gave him the strength to respond with such grace, Satpal replied without hesitation: ik oankar. "In that moment, I truly saw those men who tried to kill me as my own brothers," he explained. "I saw the anger and hate in their eyes—but I didn't feel anger or hate for them because I also saw the light in their eyes." This capacity to maintain compassion in the face of violence isn't limited to extraordinary figures. Singh shares how he once encountered teenagers shouting racist slurs at him while running. Rather than ignoring them or responding angrily, he stopped and engaged the young man who had shouted at him. Their conversation created a moment of understanding, with the teenager ultimately apologizing sincerely. "The difference between recognizing his error and continuing in his ways?" Singh reflects. "We can be that difference. All it takes is growing our capacity to see one another's humanity and giving people the chance to connect with us." Singh emphasizes that this approach isn't about forgiving those who harm us or minimizing the impact of prejudice. Rather, it's about refusing to let hate determine how we experience the world. By maintaining our commitment to compassion even in difficult moments, we protect ourselves from internalizing the very toxicity we oppose. We also create possibilities for connection where none seemed possible before. This stance of radical compassion extends beyond individual interactions to how we engage with societal challenges. Singh contrasts the performative outrage common in social media culture with the sustained commitment exemplified by movements like Black Lives Matter and the Sikh volunteers who served water to the very police officers who had attacked them during protests. True compassion, he suggests, requires moving beyond momentary displays of concern to cultivate genuine connection with those who are suffering. The path of meeting hate with love isn't easy, Singh acknowledges. It demands courage, vulnerability, and a willingness to see beyond immediate appearances to the shared humanity beneath. Yet it offers something our polarized society desperately needs—a way to challenge darkness without becoming consumed by it, and to find peace even amid conflict.

Summary

At its heart, Simran Jeet Singh's journey reveals a profound truth: our liberation lies in seeing the light in ourselves and others, even when darkness seems overwhelming. Through his experiences as a turbaned Sikh in post-9/11 America, Singh discovered that responding to hate with love isn't merely idealistic—it's practical. By practicing radical connection, maintaining integrity through values-based living, and engaging in selfless service, we create pathways to authentic happiness that transcend momentary pleasures or accomplishments. Singh's wisdom offers an alternative to our culture's emphasis on outrage, division, and materialism. In a world where we're constantly told that our worth depends on what we have or how others perceive us, Sikh teachings remind us that our true value is inherent and unchangeable. When we recognize this truth in ourselves and others, we gain the freedom to act with courage and compassion, even in the face of prejudice or violence. Anyone seeking to move beyond superficial engagement with life's challenges will find in these pages not just inspiration but practical guidance for living with greater purpose, connection, and joy—regardless of their religious background or beliefs.

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Simran Jeet Singh

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