Articlepedia: Peace in Relations

A saint found a group of family members on the banks, shouting in anger at each other. He turned to his disciples, smiled and asked. “Why do people shout in anger at each other?” One of them said, “Because we lose our calm, we shout.” Disciples gave some other answers but none satisfied the other disciples. Finally, the saint explained.

“When two people are angry at each other, their hearts distance a lot. To cover that distance they must shout to be able to hear each other. The angrier they are, the stronger they will have to shout to hear each other to cover that great distance. What happens when two people fall in love? They don't shout at each other but talk softly, because their hearts are very close. The distance between them is either non-existent or very small.”

The saint continued, “When they love each other even more, what happens? They do not speak, but only whisper. Finally, they even need not to whisper, they only look at each other and that's all. That is how close two people are when they love each other.” He looked at his disciples and said. “So when you argue does not let your hearts get distant. Do not say words that distance each other more. Or else there will come a day when the distance is so great that you will not find the path to return.

At the moment, the human ingenuity, science, info-tech gadgets, and a huge treasury of knowledge, which are the byproducts of globalization has altered the course of history in the past few decades. Hence one has to admit that they had facilitated our lives, but on the other hand they had fashioned our lives that we set up no time for those who call for our love, care and time. Since we are too busy in making a living in this highly developed period of history but we put out of our mind to make a life, by not being able to notice what is happening in the lives of our parents, siblings and children. We just desire to see our goals to be accomplished, our wants and needs to be satisfied and our dreams to come true. No one wishes to care about any one’s dreams, goals, needs and commitments. Every one of us is living a life of selfishness, greed and exploitation. This age can be rightly regarded as “tissue paper age.”

We are getting masters in professional ethics, but we forget to learn the art of making our society civilized. Our educational institutions offer a wide array of subjects that can be found vividly supportive in making a prosperous living, but they have no courses designed to learn about the humanity, emotions, love, care and why we needed it. So question is how we can live a life where there is no anger, conflict and pettiness, but there is plenty of happiness, peace, prosperity and harmony. 

The bone of contention is our ego, the bigger the ego, the bigger the suffering we may face. We must smash the ego and let the water of joy, shower on us. The anger we carry is a sign of insecurity, inferiority and complexes that we have, and symbolizes the loss of control on ourselves and takeover by the external elements or the external persons. So work on your insecurities and your anger will be gone and replaced by peace.

There must be win-win communication to be adopted to avoid the disharmony, disrespect, conflict and loss of relations. Even a simple “thank you” and “please” has “nuclear power” to turn the situations as we have wanted. We must nourish ourselves with attitude of “gratitude”, as it gives satisfaction and a notion of fulfillment.

One of the basic needs of every human being is the need to be loved, to have our wishes and feelings taken seriously, to be validated as people who matter. We are not certain to stay for another day to laugh, love, work or play, these have to be done right away. These are the genuine nuts and bolts of a dreamed life, which in fact is easy to live, if we are able to find the true way. As the great Persian poet Hafez Shiraz once said, “every base you see is faulty, except that of love, which is flawless.”

Every one of us wants to be valued and appreciated by others who matter for us, even though the greatest intellects of the time felt this need to be appreciated by someone close to them. We need to appreciate our siblings, children, friends and relatives, even though their accomplishment is small enough, but they must get the nuts of appreciation. Sometimes it takes only few words to do so, but it makes the relations alive, motivated and even stronger. It is a necessary formality.

We all are beggars of happiness. We depend on our parents, siblings and friends to bring happiness for us. But what happens, we just augment the beggary for happiness, and doesn’t let ourselves to bestow happiness to others. In order to endorse happiness around us, we don’t have to be the beggars of happiness but we have to be the givers of happiness. Then only we can sustain happy and healthy relations. 

So give up the clouds of discord and war and spread the good will, peace and harmony among the people. Just forget about the past, and make a commitment to live your new life, right here and right now. This is the right time to know that you can’t control your life but it is really up to you to control the consequences. Remember you have the talent to do this, because it is not a rocket science, it is just simple as in implementation but results are tremendous.