Wednesday 28 August 2013

Service Apartments


In the good old days, vacations meant visiting your place of origin, reconnecting with your roots, and reliving your childhood days. We carried back these memories as food for the soul, and also left behind for the hosts, fond  memories. It used to be also an opportunity to reestablish and strengthen bonds. Life was so much less complicated then!

Today, I dread it literally, when I have people coming over.  Not because I am antisocial. Not because I do not want to entertain. In fact, it is the exact opposite! I love having people over, the house is full of fun and laughter.  No,  I dread it because, I feel I am running a service apartment facility, and I for sure am not!! Visits have become so purposeful, and so motive-oriented, that it is very business-like, with only the commercial tag missing... And thank goodness for that! The "boarding and lodging facility" feeling comes, when the so-called near and dear ones do not behave like near and dear ones, but like visitors. There is a certain awkwardness, no openness in communication, issues are brushed over, and good-byes are said in a hurry, because the spirit of bonding has been missing.  I almost feeling like purifying the air after such people leave, the energy is so dense!

Of course, I have been told, you do your bit, you don't worry about how others react, at least be thankful they do come to see you ... Sure, I will.  Because you see, when I make my visits, I have had only one purpose: to visit.  My visits have no secondary agenda, and even if it does have, once in a way, it is balanced by the no-purpose visit...

Just to meet, just to bond, just to reconnect. And who am I to impose behavior patterns on others? Even if they are near and near ones, right? So I should stop feeling bad...

But this is how things turn acrid, they fade out, and slowly you start living a life for yourself, on your own terms. This is how your thinking patterns are overwritten, files are deleted from your system, you have telephone numbers you never want to call. And this is how you decide life is: autumn, red leaves slowly falling away from the tree.  The new leaves do appear, the tree does rejuvenate, but if you look closely at the trunk and the branches, it appears old and gnarled.  So I console myself saying, it is the law of nature.

Older relationships do move on, and if you continue nourishing the tree, it will sustain the new leaves, allow them to bloom.
 
So the Service apartment facility continues to remain open! To near and dear ones, of course!

Unasked and Unanswered


The child looked bewildered and lost as he entered my room. His two saucer-like eyes asked questions that his limited vocabulary did not allow him to ask.  Was he being brought to me for some mischief that he did not know he did ? Or was he here because of some reason that he would not even understand?
I looked inquiringly at the teacher, who seemed equally at a loss for words.  So I decided to initiate the conversation. The child refused to open up initially, and answered in monosyllables.  Then the teacher filled me in.  Apparently, the child had overheard a conversation between his parents where the father said that they would not send him to school, that he would teach him at home, as he was not studying properly.  The mother had also refused to buy the child some material that the child was required to bring to school for some project.

On gentle prompting, the child started contributing to our questions, and said that the previous night, his father had hit his mother while they were arguing about him.  The child went off to his room, closed the door and cried himself to sleep. He is now wondering whether he is the cause of all the misery at home!

How do you explain relationship dynamics to an eight-year-old boy?  Would he be able to relate to the situation if I tell him that adults also fight, and sometimes they fight ugly?
There is scant respect; no listening skills are employed, there are no boundaries, and it is all about a power struggle.

For the boy, all that mattered was how much was he responsible for the conflict.  For the adults, what other messages their irresponsible behavior conveyed was of least importance.  There was no way I could talk to them about healthy parenting. The partnership itself needed working on! There was no respect or dignity between the parents. All that was evident was the blame game, where they would not even think shared parenting was an important component of healthy and effective parenting. 
If there is unconditional love, respect for human dignity and acceptance of a person's frailties, then who says nurturing any relationship would be a problem? But here, the mother's unmet needs and the father's frustrations resulted in a bewildered child who may end up carrying the scars of dysfunctional parenting for the rest of his life.

Tuesday 20 August 2013

A Reality Check

You know what they say about relationships: know them, enjoy them, never attempt to understand them.  I never really adhered to this maxim.  For me, everything I savor needs dissection.  But I understood it does not work with relationships.  There are dynamics at work there you would not figure out, undercurrents you are not aware of. And then, before you know you are facing a turbulence you had no warning of, and unless you are able to withdraw quickly, you are in the eye of the storm.

Is withdrawal better, or being in the storm? If it is the former, you are protecting yourself, perhaps even the other person, and all is presumably well. I say presumably because things are not okay till they are okay. Things are not clear until they are cleared.  I am not comfortable with just moving on, without resolution.  It’s like you are continuing on a journey, leaving some of your luggage behind!  You may not really need the luggage, but you only leave garbage behind, not luggage!

Anyway, if it is withdrawal, then I need to handle the discomfort at my level, redefine my thinking, and set rules for myself. 

And what if you are in the storm?  I would flounder, gasp for breath, even go under at times; but I will survive, for the feeling that I am facing the storm, attempting to set things right, gives me the strength to face it.

Unfortunately, in relationships it is not like that; it is not a choice I can make. The other person does not want to talk about what has happened, and the storm apparently dies down. Or does it?  What havoc has it left in its aftermath?

Equations redefined?

Viewpoints altered?

Relationships cautiously handled?

I know I will survive like I always have, but I have started believing more and more in the maxim of how you are molded by your environment and the next time someone tells me you have changed a lot, I am not going to protest, I am going to gracefully smile and say, of course I have; I am not a duck, water doesn’t flow off my back, it sticks there!

Friday 16 August 2013

Validation

We have read of master psychologists who have come up with various theories of different levels of consciousness. I have found this fact very intriguing, that what we think we actually are, in reality,  is just a tip of the ice berg. A large chunk of us is the unconscious and the subconscious. 

The tip jutting out of the sea of existence is apparently the rational, judgmental part of ourselves, the self which maintains order in society, which convinces us to do the proper, right thing.  Conflicts  arise within us because we are governed by this aspect of ourselves and in this process, we tend to neglect the submerged parts.  No wonder then, that there is so much conflict, both within ourselves and all around us!

When we are faced with a conflict, two things happen: 

1. Our feelings rush in demanding acknowledgement: raw, unprocessed feelings, which cannot be right or wrong; they are just that - feelings.
2. Then, because we are programmed to be acting, thinking and feeling the "right" way all the time, the conscious, rational mind tries to take charge of the situation.
But then, what happens to these emotions which have been given birth to? They need to be attended to, and certified to existence.  We call this process as "validation". Because feelings are not right or wrong, they just ARE. When we allow ourselves to experience these feelings, they are processed and during this time of processing, they are accorded the validation that is so important for the energy arising out of these emotions. 
However, failing to understand the fact that this process bridges the gap between our conscious, so-called right-minded thinking and our subconscious emotive reactions, the latter is side-stepped in our hurry to resolve issues, take stock of a critical situation, and move on in life.

Try this:

The next time you are experiencing raw, volatile emotions, do not become judgmental. Do not try to rationalize either your feelings or the actions of anyone else. Just let yourself be with the feeling, allow yourself the experience, however unpleasant or illogical or irrational it is. Then, once a certain time period has passed, there would be a closure, and you could move on to listening to your conscious, rational mind.

Similarly, the next time you are called in to resolve any issue between two people, try not to become judgmental or interact with your rational, conscious mind. Instead, try to be at the same wavelength as the other person undergoing the pain, without jumping to a defense mode.  This validation period would allow both of you to come to a balance when the boat would steady itself, and then the communication would become easier;  simply because both of you would have been at the subconscious level, acknowledging the feelings, and then the conscious mind would be allowed to communicate effectively.