I read a very beautiful saying about apology which goes like this:
There are three parts to an apology: I am sorry, It is my fault, and what can I do about it? It is so true! First, most of us find it difficult to apologize, for we think that apologizing means that we are accepting responsibility for a mistake and we hate to do that! That explains the second part of the apology: How many of us can upfront take the onus for a fault? And the final part, as to the remedial measures to be taken, is the hardest part of it all! We are painfully aware that to take corrective action would put us in a spot where we would be required to change the way we think, the way we would respond further to any situation, and any change is resisted!
We can explain away any unacceptable behaviour in the other person, but this action of discounting can happen only when we are in a calm frame of mind, or are able to be in a position where rational thinking can be counted upon. In case we too are in a state of mind where a slight deviation from normal acceptable behaviour can act as a trigger, the whole thing escalates to a downward spiral, and there are uncountable damages to be accounted for!
I experienced one such incident a short time ago. A friend of mine, apparently very upset at something that i had no clue about, when greeted by me cheerfully turned around and snapped at me in a way that left me wondering whether i had committed the eighth sin by greeting her! It added to my embarassment that it happened in a very public place and i had to walk away with the smile stuck to my face, while i was seething inside, for i did not want to be party to any ugly scene and offer a free entertainment show to visitors. I calmed down while i was driving back home from work but it continued to bother me, so i sent her a message asking her to let me know when she would be free to talk. There was no response for two whole days. I decided to forget about it, though i was nursing my hurt privately, as one of my new year resolution was that i was never going to give anybody the satisfaction of knowing that they have succeeded in hurting me!
Then, suddenly i get this call where i am given details of how the day went, how that particular day was very stressful, and how she had been unable to handle things and that things were getting out of hand.... I waited. And waited. And waited. But only explanations came: no talk of, i am sorry for how i behaved! At the end, when she got away from the topic, i just made a comment saying that i was upset because i was placed in a situation where i had to explain her behaviour, without knowing facts, and it was more of an embarassment than anything else.
Are explanations good enough i wonder? Even if it is between very good friends? Are there any norms even in close relationships, where courtesy and manners strengthen the bonds? Sometimes it matters that you apologize, verbalise your feeling bad about something, however close your relationship. It helps to validate the other person’s hurt and say it was not something that should have happened.
But all this never happened. And that is when i realised that in any relationship, unless we have a code of conduct, we would always be in danger of being taken for granted. Let this be a lesson for me: let me remember to thank all the good friends in my life for all that they have done for me, acknowledge them as a part of my evolution, and if i know i have hurt them apologize for the hurt. Let me not contribute to more angst than there is in the world! And for this wisdom, for this learning, thank you dear friend!!!
Mohana Narayanan
February 23,2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
BENDING RULES
How easy it is to spend your life finding faults! If your disposition is such that you definitely need full moon on all the days of the month, the summer and winter temperatures have to be predetermined and the needle on the barometer should be steady, imagine the kind of agony you would be living in, day in and day out! Yet inspite of knowing that control over these natural phenomena is out of bounds, if we have the fault finding gene predominantly floating around in our system, our life’s purpose is then programmed! We live our lives blaming everything and everyone we can lay our hands on, and if there were any jobs available for this post, most of us would be employed or be in the queue for the position!
We know there would be no conflict resolution as soon as one person counters the other with a fault that the other person has, instead of focusing on the current issue. This is what happens in most relationships, especially marital ones. The blame game goes on and on, and it leaves me wondering: Do you want to fight, or do you want to solve the problem? Finding a loophole in the other person’s behavior does not justify your stand: how do you assert your viewpoint at the expense of the other? How does it help in any resolution or arriving at an amicable solution? I know sometimes there are no resolutions to certain conflicts. If the husband is a stickler for perfectionism for example, he will hit the roof every time he sees a speck of dust on the centre table, or finds hair in the wash room. If the wife is the kind who lives her life by the clock, imagine how she would cope with the agony of a travelling husband or even one who is in the marketing and sales field! The partners would be labeled as shoddy and unclean, and unpunctual without any respect for time, respectively. These would become the battleground for conflicts where the underlying issues would also escalate and reach alarming proportions. I guess it would take a lot of looking from behind the mirror, to actually get into a frame of mind when we can think from the others’ perspective.
If only we are able to assimilate one simple fact: Not everybody lives by our rules: Each one of us is made different, and how many ever arguments we go through, if we insist on holding on to our view of an issue, the conflict is never resolved. Of course there are some conflicts that can never be resolved; conflicts that exist on issues dealing with family interpersonal clashes, conflicts even within ourselves where we keep wondering whether a certain step we have taken was in everybody’s best interests or not, conflicts that we sometime let go for we reach a catch 22 situation, and we know we cannot go further. In such cases, what do we do? Stewing in the cauldron never did anyone good. All we can do is to arrive at an impasse, let go of the emotional pain and get on with life. I know, it is easier said than done, and I am certainly not claiming to be a monk with profound insight or the temperance to follow this. But I can truthfully say that though the emotional memories surface, rationalizing happens faster with me nowadays than it did before, and I am able to set aside these issues and continue as my life unfolds. Now that is definitely good enough for me!
Mohana Narayanan
February 17, 2011
We know there would be no conflict resolution as soon as one person counters the other with a fault that the other person has, instead of focusing on the current issue. This is what happens in most relationships, especially marital ones. The blame game goes on and on, and it leaves me wondering: Do you want to fight, or do you want to solve the problem? Finding a loophole in the other person’s behavior does not justify your stand: how do you assert your viewpoint at the expense of the other? How does it help in any resolution or arriving at an amicable solution? I know sometimes there are no resolutions to certain conflicts. If the husband is a stickler for perfectionism for example, he will hit the roof every time he sees a speck of dust on the centre table, or finds hair in the wash room. If the wife is the kind who lives her life by the clock, imagine how she would cope with the agony of a travelling husband or even one who is in the marketing and sales field! The partners would be labeled as shoddy and unclean, and unpunctual without any respect for time, respectively. These would become the battleground for conflicts where the underlying issues would also escalate and reach alarming proportions. I guess it would take a lot of looking from behind the mirror, to actually get into a frame of mind when we can think from the others’ perspective.
If only we are able to assimilate one simple fact: Not everybody lives by our rules: Each one of us is made different, and how many ever arguments we go through, if we insist on holding on to our view of an issue, the conflict is never resolved. Of course there are some conflicts that can never be resolved; conflicts that exist on issues dealing with family interpersonal clashes, conflicts even within ourselves where we keep wondering whether a certain step we have taken was in everybody’s best interests or not, conflicts that we sometime let go for we reach a catch 22 situation, and we know we cannot go further. In such cases, what do we do? Stewing in the cauldron never did anyone good. All we can do is to arrive at an impasse, let go of the emotional pain and get on with life. I know, it is easier said than done, and I am certainly not claiming to be a monk with profound insight or the temperance to follow this. But I can truthfully say that though the emotional memories surface, rationalizing happens faster with me nowadays than it did before, and I am able to set aside these issues and continue as my life unfolds. Now that is definitely good enough for me!
Mohana Narayanan
February 17, 2011
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
THE EMPTY GIFT BOX...
Have you ever been in a situation when you have been given a gift-wrapped package, and opening it, found it empty? I remember this as a prank that was played on us when I was in Class XI, during our farewell party in school. We were all given a big box gift-wrapped, and all of us were requested to open the same. Admist teary-eyed smiles (after all it was parting moments!), we all tore open our boxes, only to find hydrogen balloons in them, that immediately escaped to the ceiling, leaving us with empty boxes in our hands, though the ceiling was blooming with colourful balloons! Of course, we got our real gifts later, as this had been a practical joke, but I still remember some of us looking disappointed when we found our boxes empty!
And strangely, I revisited that feeling, buried deep within my unconscious, when I read a life story of a friend of mine, of whose life I had been a very important part (or so I thought!) It distressed me to find that there was barely a mention of my presence, and the whole work focused on people who had actually been a major reason why we drifted apart. How insignificant I felt then, that I had not mattered as much as I thought I had mattered! Imagine, at one point in our relationship we would actually call ourselves each others’ soul-mates. Now, would a life story be complete I wonder, without the mention of your soul-mate? (even if the association as a soul-mate was for a specific period in time?) I did touch her life, and I touched it in a significant way. Not that it was a blow to my self-esteem, but just that I am finding it harder and harder to stop getting cynical about relationships. Her growth was visible; so were her changes. I was glad and though the changes brought about a rift between us, we still held on to the relationship, simply because we had invested too much in it in the past. But today I know,I had invested much more; for if she had, I would have been one of the sign posts in the writing: I was missing! We mattered a lot to each other then, and since the story was about the ‘then’ it was as if certain pages in a book were torn away. Of course, the continuity is beautifully established! But then what can’t editing do these days??? Editing of written work, thoughts, emotions….. Maybe a wrong route? Possiby! Would I allow this feeling of getting an empty gift-wrapped package cloud my future relationships I wonder?
Mohana narayanan
February 16, 2011
And strangely, I revisited that feeling, buried deep within my unconscious, when I read a life story of a friend of mine, of whose life I had been a very important part (or so I thought!) It distressed me to find that there was barely a mention of my presence, and the whole work focused on people who had actually been a major reason why we drifted apart. How insignificant I felt then, that I had not mattered as much as I thought I had mattered! Imagine, at one point in our relationship we would actually call ourselves each others’ soul-mates. Now, would a life story be complete I wonder, without the mention of your soul-mate? (even if the association as a soul-mate was for a specific period in time?) I did touch her life, and I touched it in a significant way. Not that it was a blow to my self-esteem, but just that I am finding it harder and harder to stop getting cynical about relationships. Her growth was visible; so were her changes. I was glad and though the changes brought about a rift between us, we still held on to the relationship, simply because we had invested too much in it in the past. But today I know,I had invested much more; for if she had, I would have been one of the sign posts in the writing: I was missing! We mattered a lot to each other then, and since the story was about the ‘then’ it was as if certain pages in a book were torn away. Of course, the continuity is beautifully established! But then what can’t editing do these days??? Editing of written work, thoughts, emotions….. Maybe a wrong route? Possiby! Would I allow this feeling of getting an empty gift-wrapped package cloud my future relationships I wonder?
Mohana narayanan
February 16, 2011
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