Eccentric

I think the people in my life are just going to have to accept that I'm eccentric. They can roll their eyes behind my back if they want to, but this is simply me being true to myself.

I have continued to think about the regions of India and I made a list of aspects of Indian culture that I have been following and where they are from:
Dance--South
Food--North
Dress--North
Language--North
Religion--Unknown

I follow vedantic Hinduism, also known as advaita or smartism. Advaita is the word I use most often to describe it, the word means "Non-duality." It does not seem to be associated with a particular area. There are, ideally, four Shankaracharyas (ultimate gurus for this branch), one for each compass direction.

So with everything else, a pattern emerges. North Indian seems to be what calls to me the most with the exception of my beloved classical dance.

It will be interesting to see how all this plays out when I have children. I will raise them as Hindus and I will raise them bilingual, speaking Hindi. I will bring them to temple and have the girls in Indian dance classes, etc. And I plan to give them Indian names, though also a middle name or nickname variation that is regular American.

I wonder how they will incorporate the culture I give them in their adult lives. I imagine they may go the opposite direction as me. It seems to happen that way with children. They may wonder why I gave them Indian culture and religion when they are not Indian. But to my mind, it has to be better than being raised in confusion as I was, having no sense of culture at all.

These are my beliefs and I will do my best to instill them in my children, though I hope to always leave room for them to come to their own interpretation of the world.
And they will roll their eyes and tell people that their mother is eccentric. Hopefully, a lovable eccentric.