The Joy of Finding New Relationships

Wedding times are the times of bonding between family members.  It is a pleasant experience, as all the family members got involved in organizing the function and making a lot of preparations. A family looks a little bigger than it ever was, with so many new faces joining in. As it is said, marriage is not just a joining of two persons, but two families. For sure, every wedding brings with it a number of new people into our life, in the form of new relationships.

 

I reflected a little deeply on the evolving nature of relationships. I feel that the families are shrinking in size, with most of the new generation not preferring to have more than two kids. Gone are the days, when we saw large families of 8 to 12 children and so on. Those days, we had so many uncles and so many aunts, so many cousins, whose name even we were not sure of.  But with the current trend, the number of relations we will have in the next few years will automatically get greatly reduced. Already, most of us are finding ourselves in a situation where we have more friends as compared to the number of family relations. 

Try out this small exercise. Take a piece of paper and write down the names of all the people who you know, people whose names you can recognize by seeing their faces, and the people who in turn know you, by your name. You will be surprised that you cannot write more than 2000 names, no matter your age, your memory capability or your networking skills. Knowing 2000 people in a world of over 7 billion people, is such a tiny figure. Is it not?

 

The need to relate with people, to share and care is one of our primary needs. We as human beings crave for social belonging and acceptance. The feeling of being as a crowd gives a sense of well being and security. In order to achieve this we need to re-learn the art of relating with people. We can no more take our relationships for granted. We need to nurture them in order to sustain them. No one is going to come talk with someone who always has a long face, who always shows anger, who has a criticizing approach, who gives a sly look, who gets tensed and causes tension to others, who is harsh with his words and tone, who does not respects other feelings, who tries to unduly dominate in a group. In fact, by doing so they are losing out on relationships, day by day and there will be a day when they will be all alone. Even then, they will keep blaming the people for deserting them and never realize where they went wrong.

Let us not close the door of our heart to new relationship. Let us always have a welcome smile, so that anyone feels comfortable coming and talking to us. Every new acquaintance is an opportunity for a wonderful relationship to blossom. What we are going to do with the acquaintance is totally in our hands. We can maintain a “hi, bye” relationship or take it a little further and try to understand them, share their interest and relate with them, know more about their children, remember their special occasions and give gifts, visit them when they are sick or hospitalized,  and develop a little intimacy. These little acts of kindness will go a long way in building great relationships.

 

Friendliness is not a terminology meant only for friends. It is common to all relationships. What we need to understand is that, in the future relationship will greatly depend upon how friendly we are with people and not by the relationship. Let us be a friend to our relations, be it our spouse, our children, our parents, our sister or brother, our cousins, our uncles and aunts, our in-laws. In due course, you will find you are not alone, but you have a great team to back you up.

    D. Senthil Kannan,

   Managing Trustee, PALMS, Tuticorin.

   Author of "Transformational Thoughts" - A Journey of learning 

   Email: senthilkannand@gmail.com