Human relationship is an extremely important issue for every individual. We all know subliminally that good, congenial, and healthy relationship with others is a source of happiness and mental peace. In the fast-paced world of today, stress-free life is fast becoming a rarity. The enormous amount of stress that individuals have to live with is distorting healthy value systems and causing breakdown of families, physical illnesses like hypertension and diabetes, and a whole host of mental problems. In spite of knowing this we find ourselves incapable of maintaining our interpersonal relationships the way they ought to be. We read a lot of self-help books, consult psychotherapists, and attend lectures and seminars conducted by experts on values, only to find that the benefits of doing this do not percolate into our daily relationships. Our untrained inherent tendencies surface and act as switches triggering actions that vitiate our relationships. This generates nervousness and sometimes even cynicism. Many times, the ‘other’ is blamed for the cause of the disharmony in a relationship. The other individual, in turn, is under the spell of a similar triggering mechanism. This makes rapprochement even more difficult.
Very often we want the solution to this problem on our own
terms and within our own framework.
Anything beyond our limited self-created world is rejected and we tend to
search for a solution that
justifies our conduct. If such a solution is found, it can soothe us for the
time being, but is usually not
a lasting one. Frequent failures in ameliorating disrupted relationships can
result in a cynical world
view, a rigid and false opinion of the people around us. To understand the
nature of human relationships we need to change our existing ways of thinking
and accept higher frameworks with an open mind.