Dukh Daroo, Sukh Rog Bhaiya - Pain is the medicine, and comfort is the disease. -Guru Arjun Dev Ji.

The context of this was that when we are engrossed in luxuries, we forget God. But considering how God is within ourselves...I think we truly forget ourselves as well.

In Punjab, there has been opulence recently due to land. At what cost? Punjabis are sitting on their asses doing absolutely nothing, while other states are pulling ahead in industrialization/modernization. Rich kids are getting into drugs. Sikhism is in a very difficult position.

In America, we had a shooting in the Gurdwara. In its pain, the Sikh community came together, made an initiative to educate and spread awareness. Now, the American media is starting to recognize Sikhs. Call me crazy, but I think that fucked up shooter was one of the best things to happen to Sikhs in America recently (911 is a different story).

Mir Mannu was the man responsible for the deaths and persecution of thousands of Sikhs in the 1700s. He cut up Sikh babies and put them as garlands on mothers' necks. A horrible character. ""Mannu is our sickle, We the fodder for him to mow, The more he cuts, the more we grow."-a famous Sikh epithet at the time. Despite all the bad he did, Sikhs grew STRONG under Mannu's rule, just as they did under Ahmed Shah Abdali's genocides. We lost much of our moral resolve when we started acting like kings and warlords such as in the later misl period and the time of the Maharaja.

From recent times least the painful experiences of 1984 revived Sikhism in many ways; otherwise, many of us were turning to be pure puppets of the Indian regime, and forgetting the Khalsa sovereignty.

I hope these historical examples give context to how it's not just the typical religious argument about how "oh, people were more religious in the good old days," or "Everything happens for a special reason," or "If you just have faith, everything will turn out aight," or "we need to suffer to be good people." As Sikhs, we don't need to invite genocides, become dirt poor, etc, in order to improve. But it certainly is not always as bad as it may seem, just as we don't know if benefits are always as good as they may seem.