Nursing Parents’ Wounds

It is quite disheartening to even imagine that parents after about twenty years of blissful marital life could think of separation; whatever be the cause of family discord, it is hard to think of a situation where the couple feel quite incompatible, even after the two girl children, both of them quite grown up. At a time when the elder daughter is old enough to become a mother herself, it is next to impossible for her to think that her parents were contemplating seriously about separation, and she herself would do anything to stop that happening, but then she feels that she is helpless, at least in this situation.

Which child would think of his or her parents being separated; the modern world has seen many such cases, where the children are asked by the court to choose with which parent he/she would like to live, but as everyone is aware it is not possible to make a decision, that a child would live with the father or the mother. A child’s heart is too tender and soft to be torn apart by two parties. Granted that the two girls are grown up, that is not the reason for the parents to think of separation, and it is doubtful if the couple had exhausted all the possibilities of keeping the light of their marital bliss alive and blazing.

Parents are expected to nurse the wounds of their growing children, to stand by their side when the storms of life shake them from the root, but here is a situation where the children are called in to nurse the wounds of the parents, and the children just beginning to see the true color of the world are forced to witness yet another harsh reality of life, and they could hardly accept which looms before them. But would the parents who had been having stormy sessions on regular intervals down the years, think of giving another chance to the spouse to amend and get the family ties going? If the personal peace and happiness is what matters most to the couple, then it would have been better if they had not married at all!

For the elder daughter, who had offered her life to the Lord, it is more than her share of suffering the Lord had given to her, and every time she remembered the situation back at home, her eyes are filled with tears, but is it possible to leave behind the family, parents and the relationships and concentrate on her own personal call! As an individual who had grown nourishing the love and care of the parents, she feels she cannot afford to let this thing happen to her parents, but she is also aware of the crude reality, which reminds her, what if they do not care to listen to her plea! She would not have any one to appeal to!

It is not that my parents have peaceful life after about 45 years of their marriage; they have their own share of misunderstanding, quarrels, but I know one thing for sure, they could never think of separation, and even if they fight, we know for sure they would be back to talking terms after a couple of days. But times are changing, and if married persons were to think only of their personal freedom, happiness and peace of mind, then the family is bound to go to pieces and it would be impossible for anyone to save the situation. It is only God who can intervene to stop the couple breaking away, because their breaking is sure to affect the lives of the children too, and that is the reason why the daughters have begun to storm the heaven with their prayers.

Lessons from Crows

Just outside the window of my room is a tall tree (how sad that I had not known the tree by its name!), and crow couple has been struggling to build a nest for the past two years. And what is beautiful in this couple is that one of them is physically challenged! I don’t know if it is a male or a female, but I assume it is a male, because he had been hunting for food and was feeding his partner often. Crows are not good nest builders, and yet the two had been making all efforts to bring in twigs, wires, grass, and even strings to put up a nest. After spending a few months on a nest, the couple suddenly gave up the nest, and one fine morning I saw them dismantling it! I really don’t know if the couple had a fight over the location of the nest, but it did not seem so.

Just about a month ago, I noticed the female crow recceeing for a different location for the nest, very close to the place they had built their former nest; maybe about a foot distance from the former, and on the same tree. The female crow checked the suitability of the location, and after two days I saw both of them collecting twigs and plastic wires from all possible places. And this time the nest was ready within a week, and the female crow began to sit on it, probably even laying eggs. She sat the whole day, and when it railed one evening, I could see the crow still sitting there quietly. I wondered why she was not moving to another place where she would not get wet! Probably there were eggs, and she wanted to protect them from the rain.

It was study time for me, while looking at the way this couple related to each other, how they moved from one nest to another without grumbling or accusing each other. When I see the so-called physically challenged people begging in the trains and at market squares, I realize that these are the people who are lazy to the core, and instead of following the good example of the male crow, they shamelessly seek to make a living out of begging; and to make things worse, there are many who are moved by the plight of the physically challenged (a good per cent of these men and women only feign to be physically challenged, while in fact they are not!), and dole out money every time they see someone asking for money.

While the animals and plants can live through handicap, even physical, why is it that only the human beings make too much fuss about the handicap? If a crow without a toe can live a normal life, and without ever complaining about it, why is it that men and women make such a hue and cry about their minor handicaps? I found it so moving, when the male crow brought food for his partner every day morning and fed her; it was a wonderful sight. I know among people, misunderstanding is the greatest enemy of relationships; if the channels of communications are destroyed, then everything come to a standstill. But in the case of these crows, life goes on. I guess there could be misunderstanding among them too, but life does not stop there, they continue with life as joyfully as ever.

Each one of us build our own nests of relationships and after sometime we might realize that the nest we had been building does not suit our purpose, and that would be the time to dismantle it and start a different one, all over again. If we realize after sometime that we had been nurturing an unhealthy relationship with a person, it might be necessary to terminate it, and start relating to another person with better vibrations, so that there is enough moral and psychological backup given to us through other persons. We cannot afford to freeze life, it has to go on. I envy these birds who seem to be having a happy and joyful time together, though I have not seen them together too often. Who knows if they have another more permanent abode in the vicinity!

Calling on Comparisons

Even before we begin our day, we prepare ourselves for a better tomorrow. We are not contended with the present, or things as they are, but would only look for “better” things to come, even if that remains just a dream. Human mind cannot think of persons or things or events, except in comparisons, and may be that is the reason why we are not able to live the actual people we relate with, actual things that are at our disposal and actual events we go through. Human mind is not satisfied with the status quo, but looks always for a change, which would be better than the one we are presently dealing with. Though this might seem a blessing in disguise, it has its own share of curses as well.

Recently I realized the danger of comparing persons, be they friends, coworkers, or superiors, or even siblings. I favor one of my brothers to two others, because the one I favor had been taken care of by me in his childhood days; I had carried him on my shoulders, fed him, and protected him, when my mother was out in the fields. As a result I had developed a special affinity to him, and today care for him more than the other two brothers, one elder and one younger. I often tend to look at my relationship with this brother in comparison with the other two, and feel quite justified in doing so, even when I know I might be unjustly disfavor my two other brothers and favor this brother.

If there are so much of misunderstanding between siblings, friends, coworkers, lovers and husband and wife, it is most often because we begin to compare one with another, and as one of my friends put it recently, it is like a slap on the cheek! In my family, as soon as we had the second sister-in-law my parents began to compare one with other, and soon began quarrels, misunderstandings. One was favored by my parents, while the other was avoided. Just like me, my parents too had forgotten the basic law of nature that no one on earth likes to be compared to another, especially if it is for downsizing or putting down one. That is bound to lead to misunderstanding, and even break in relationships.

It is true we wish to improve our relationship with others, and want our dear ones to come to our expectations; but when a person gives his/her very best to me, would it be justifiable to expect that person to give like the third person I might have known! Though I am aware of the dangers of comparing one with another, and yet unconsciously I do it all the time. I compare one of my superiors with another, often to say one was better than the other, and what I imply by this is : that the former was worse than the latter. It might not much matter if I make these comparisons to persons who are not involved, but if I have to say the same to even either of the persons involved, it is sure to make things bitter.

We thrive on comparisons, and while we do compare one person with another, what we indirectly mean is that this person has to be like that one; that this person has to fulfill my dreams, aspirations and needs like that of the other, even if I know that this is asking for too much. Here I fail to see what these persons are offering to me, instead I look at what they offer to me in response to my own personal needs and demands. I may be able to do greater justice to relations, if I am able to see what other peoples offer to me per se, without looking at them from my perspective, needs and wants. If this were to happen, then I might realize that there are areas where I may need to do some amount of soul-searching exercise to question what I really expect from these persons, and if I can be justified in doing so. That may be the beginning of a new chapter in my life.

Art of Understanding

I really wonder how we human beings understand one another so well. I don’t know if there is any other creature on earth, who understand and communicate with one another as well as the humans. We depend largely on language to communicate, but language is not all. There are people who are able to communicate with others through non-verbal signs and gestures. The speech-impaired do communicate themselves, though their communication is very different from what most of the people would do.

But behind this seemingly simple process of understanding one another, there is a whole lot of things happening in and out of us. In order to understand a person, the receiver should be in a proper frame of mind, to receive the code which comes encoded in the form of a gesture or language, and it is the duty of the receiver to decode the message, and respond appropriately to show the receiver that the message has been properly received. Levi Strauss has extensively studied the way we communicate with one another… but that is all theory.

Why do we often experience a break in communication? Why do we face misunderstanding even with familiar people? In a communicative process, any disturbing factor is technically called a noise; this noise is not merely auditory, consisting of audio signals, but it has several layers, one important layer being the psychological. This simply means that in order to achieve a good level of communication, the speaker’s heart should be in sync (short for synchronization) with that of the receiver’s heart. When there is a mismatch, then the communication is bound to fail.

Thus it is within our power to direct the way communication takes place with me and within me; it is not too difficult to create artificial noise around me so that I do not hear the other person, and then can go to any extent to find excuses. No communication is hundred percent faultless. The perfect communication that can ever be possible is beyond the reach of human beings. Even an attempt to communicate to my own inner self is inadequate, and leaves a lot of gap, that I find it hard to reach a perfect equilibrium with one’s own self.

But how does God communicate to human beings, and what are the noises that we can identify? Even when God communicates himself/herself through the best medium possible, yet human mind may plant an artificial barrier between them and the message… No wonder, our communication with God, or the reverse, God’s communication with humanity is never a finished task, but a process that will go on till the end of time. Maybe at the end of time, we may sigh and say, Ah, now we understand what God was communicating to us!