Squaring the Circle...

Over the past many months I’ve done quite some thinking over why certain relationships work and others don’t. And what I’ve come up with is information that deserves to be fine-toothed by combed examination.

I also realise that more people than I can possibly think of deliberate and mull over the same thing almost regularly, however circumferencing their understanding around the radius of self, which I believe is not radius enough to make a fair conclusion.

This is to say that we as individuals would never in a lifetime bring about change if not for our interactions with those around us. Constant interaction of all sorts rubbing on us – both ways good and bad - make us realize our need for and to change, or to reassure us that we fine the way we are – short, tall, fat, thin, dark, fair, gifted, challenged, warts, blemishes or both…

In my many many discussions with friends and with myself, I have come to believe that relationships that stand the test of time and patience have one major thing in common - willingness; It is why people stay married for many years, why families stand-by strong, why people choose to remain in love despite times of adversity.

Willingness is accepting people for who they are and not for what they might be. It’s about adapting, sometimes even stretching beyond your elastic limit - and that’s tough. I guess that’s what Amma means every time she refers to “being the bigger person” in a relationship.

It’s a tough cookie to digest, especially when you know that it has to pass through your buckled cavity of inertia; An inertia that by its very nature is opposed to a change in existing state, causing people to sit idle in the face of life’s changing paradigms.

But this is not to be, at least not in a life that is more than just about myself.

I increasingly am made to realise that the more I allow myself to rub against those who think differently than I do, the more I learn that there is more than one perspective on how this journey through life is travelled. Reminds me of the Carnot’s cycle in high school Chemistry…

I have realised that the more I revolve my life around others, the more I learn to be a better person

People (or even situations) are like sand paper, constantly smoothing your rough edges provided you’re willing to let them. Abrasion happens when you decide not to yield. It’s a conscious decision you have to make to be willing. And, here I must add, willingness does not equate conforming – blindly or otherwise - to someone else. Rather it's taking time consider all possible options and yet realizing that the options of dealing with people issues are endless.

And it not that you have to be in concurrence with the otherat all times as well; Disagreements, varied opinions/perceptions/perspectives are but inevitable, considering that there are as many insights as there are people. But these counter viewpoints are vital because they make you grow and think about things that are important to you. They help you stand up and put up a good fight, especially when you care enough to work hard building facts supporting your point of view.

And that’s the ultimate truth of life. Two people comfortable with each other, don’t an easy life with each other always make. It’s the willingness to make the effort to stay on and make things work that separates the wheat from the chaff.

In many ways I guess, this key understanding has come to sum my relationship across my role-set of interaction with family and close friends alike. You don’t throw good thing going for you because it’s hard work; rather you learn to take one day at a time telling those who matter “ I’ll never give up on you no matter what…”

"A good relationship is about you telling me what a son of a bitch I am, and me telling you what a pain in the ass you are and we not worrying about hurting each others feelings because in a few seconds, we’ll be over it and onto the next pain in the ass thing!" (simply love that line...borrowed as it is were from The Notebook)

Agony Buddaahh!

I tell you counselling is ripping me apart. It's like I continuously have to weave all of myself together; I grow in fragments and when those fragments grow independent of each other, I gradually find them causing lesions in my pysche in ways I don't even realise. And before long I find myself crumbling because nothing seems to hold the disintegrating parts of me together.

But here's where the magic begins - slowly after I have crumbled, I build myself "whole" again, in ways that even I didn't know were ever possible!

I pick up the strands, take my heart to work and ask the most and best of everybody else as I deftly weave the smorgasboard of fragments into a beautiful quilt that can keep me and everyone else around me warm on windy days.

Doing this for quite some time now, I have learned a few things about myself - some interesting and some pure painful! I realise I am deeply scared of losing - in a metaphoric way - the love,support and constant unobstrusive presence of people in my life. And what makes this so painful is that I am sacred of losing thm all because I am scared of trusting myself - I keep having images of the time I was too scared to hold crystal in my hand because it was so delicate and fragile and that if I goofed up I would not be able to do a thing about having destroyed for good something so priceless and beautiful. Now I realise that THAT Crystal is just me and my freedom.

There have been moments of immense unity with another as I met few people who unguardedly spoke to me, telling me all - secrets they had buried deep within and now wanted to share. Knowing fully well that they would never be able to share these things over again, they chose to seek refuge in the camp of which I am commander, if only for a few hours. And when I see these people letting me in on their secrets and I realise they come to me because they want someone to know the truth before that part of them will then be killed forever, never to surface again.

I think of the time a journalist friend of mine got phone calls from a man whose colony was filled with a violent mob during the riots - I don't remember the exact details...but he called my friend to tell her that if he died he wanted someone to know what he knew...to tell the world what he saw. I close my eyes and this image is immediately replaced by the image of the secret tellers who come to meet me, who speak to me...hoping I will now share the burden of their secrets...just so that they can be assured that someone knows.

Here is something I read not so long ago based on the work of Erich Fromm, a psychologist who is part of the Freudian wing. Better known for his books "Escape from freedom," "Art of loving" and "Fear of freedom” It breaks me to see bountifully crafted thoughts expressed so beautifully:

You are confronted with existential dichotomies ...unsettling and unavoidable discrepancies. you did not choose to be born, but suicide is highly disapproved . You have many potentialities that you know can never be fulfilled. You must live with the fact that injustices you cannot right will plague you. you must also live as fully and completely as possible with the recognition that death is inevitable.

Know that you can never reach a state of complete harmony and tranquility. with the greatest brain evolved, the human being is nevertheless the eternal wanderer. there are always new things to be known, gaps in knowledge to be filled.

We strive for perfect relatedness with others and we are doomed to failure in our attempts. The human being is the only creature who can be bored, who can be discontented, who can project a better life but cannot always achieve it.

It is our lot to find harmony within ourselves and between ourselves and nature through the use of reason. We do not discover harmony, we must create it.

We must make our own world because the world we find is not suited to us.