How Relationships Affect Us
I have seen many friends who have been married for more than a year now, and the husband complaining about his wife’s behavior while the wife complaining about her husband’s idiosyncratic habits like digging the nose publicly, biting the nails or not bathing everyday. I have heard many grown ups complaining about their parents not being comfortable in social meetings. They remain ashamed to take them to social gatherings as they are not updated with the modern behavior. Similarly, those disheartened parents keep on struggling to match their children’s expectations and on failing they complain about their children’s ignorance. I myself at one point of time got very frustrated with my parents when I took them to a social gathering. Their communication was not proper and I felt a little ashamed to not find them comfortable in that situation. Later, after returning home, I really behaved badly with them telling them that they are not worthy to be taken to similar types of social gatherings in future.
But, a few days later I realized that was not the way I should have behaved. They are not going out to late night parties and discos as I do; they do not have modern friends like I do; they are not used to the world that I live outside the closed doors. They re-live their monotonous lives everyday to cater to my needs and provide me the life they might not have been able to live during their teens. So how can I expect them to change in a minute for me? It was so painful for me to realize that I had really broken their heart. I know many of you are relating to this incident like mine. Many of you might have faced a similar situation.
Once, in a forest there were a herd of porcupines. In the winter season the temperature in the forest dropped as low as -20 degrees. It was unbearably cold and the porcupines didn’t know what to do. It was then when they realized that they should all arrange a meeting to develop strategies to survive the winter months. When they all came together they realized that the closer they were the better they felt. The warmth of each of their bodies were keeping them hot and they realized that this could make them survive.
But as we all know that porcupines have long poking needle like structures all over their body. So when they were clinging to each other, their needle like poking structures were inflicting pain to their nearby friend. So they were quite uncomfortable. One of the porcupines couldn’t tolerate it anymore and decided to leave. He decided to live in the jungle by himself comfortably. But after a few hours he realized that it was too cold and it was not possible for him to survive in this cold winter. Hence, he had two choices, either to stay lonely and be comfortable and die in the cold winter or return back to his friends and try to adjust to the uncomfortable situation, but survive the adverse weather. He decided to return back to the warmth of love and hence, he survived.
Similarly, it depends on us whether we want to live happily with our parents, spouse, siblings or friends and enjoy the warmth of love or leave them and stay alone and miss out on the small elements of happiness that life offers us. It is entirely our choice hence, choose wisely.
