Human relationships are truly strange. In some discussions today — my old time friend was visiting me from India and we were talking about all kind of things — much of the discussions was about relationships.
It is always puzzling to me that some people will behave very nicely with unknown and less known people. They are very nice to their friends and remote family members. But when it comes to close family members, they not only take them granted but also behave as if something really wrong has been done by them. They keep claiming love, but behave cruel to them.
How can this happen? One sees this kind of behaviour sometimes in movies, but when you see this in real life it does become more strange than in movies. What is more important is that one does not know how to deal with them.
In any case, it is very nice to meet a friend of about 50 years — it is difficult to imagine that you have known somebody for 50 years and have remained close while living on the other side of the globe for most of this time.
Well, Prof. Jain, the fact is that we are not kind with ourselves to begin with. We evaluate and judge every word we said and fret over things we did or did not do. How many people take the time to thank themselves for being alive or for having accomplished all they have in their lifetime. We can only hear people complaining about their hip or leg (or wherever it is hurting them at present) without ever having thanked any part of our body for functioning exactly as it should for all the years that it has. We should actually be thanking the part that hurts for letting us know that something is not right and that we need to take more care of ourselves. If we can’t be kind to ourselves and love ourselves, how can we be kind to our spouses and our children and those who are close to us? We play the same games over and over again. What goes around comes around. When we are being unkind to others, we are actually hurting ourselves in the same instance. Once we understand this and start being kind to ourselves and others, our vocabulary changes and people around us respond to us in a better way.
Dear mr. Jain,
Will you also give college to exchange students like me?
As a Dutchie I am very interested in your activities at Virage in the passed century.
Respectfully yours,
GL
Good post,
When we are being unkind to others, we are actually hurting ourselves in the same instance. Once we understand this and start being kind to ourselves and others, our vocabulary changes and people around us respond to us in a better way.
thanks
Unfortunately you are not yet a teacher that is in my courses for this exchange semester. I hoped it but unfortunately… Well, I guess I should just keep on tracking your blog 😉
Yes, I completely agree to the fact that Human relationships are truly strange. Hence one can say that the relationships which we have with other people are projections of the relationships we have within ourselves. In fact either of our relationships, whether it is external or internal possesses same kind of theory although they only seem different because we look at them through different lenses.
Well, I believe that in any case unconditional love is the back bone of human relationships. The more we will improve our internal relationships between our thoughts, beliefs, and intentions, the more loving and harmonious our human relationships will become. At the end it’s good to say that keep hold of unconditional love in your consciousness, and you’ll see it reflected in your reality.
Thanks for this interesting post professor. My view on this is that people behave insecure against persons they don’t know. People standing close don’t have to be “captured”, if you will, and in fact don’t receive the outer respect they actually deserve.
I have a very distant, cool relationship with my family, because I gradually moved away from them (geographically as well as emotionally). Time is an important factor – it takes a while to get used to the absence of somebody who was once a major presence in one’s life, even if they were a bad presence. Also, a support system of stable, reliable, caring friends and/or relatives is a huge help.
Well I think the reason people treat their close ones so close is because they take them for granted. When you see someone regularly for years on end, we tend to take our relationship with them for granted and treat them poorly because of this. It is a very interesting through how people can treat complete strangers with more respect than their own mothers.