Relationships – The Uncommon Man

Choices. Reactions. It’s the stuff that life is made of. Come to think of it what is life but the choices we make and our reactions to the experiences and incidents that happen to us?

I have always been a propagator of this agenda but somehow it’s pretty hard to follow 100%. There are times when I slip up and forget to be calm, react objectively and I lose the plot at times. I do my best to recover, and most often I do as well but the pain of having been ‘common’ lingers. After all who wants to be the common man?

Common reactions lead to poor relationships. Our brain is probably wired for us to react poorly to conflict and painful situations. We need to overcome that initial urge to react and be very logical in our thought to have an uncommon reaction. This uncommon or common reaction is what we call attitude. So you may have noticed that whenever we're in conflict with someone, and we want to do something to hurt the other person because we are hurting, there is still one factor that separates damaging your relationship or deepening it. It’s called attitude.

The next time you boss cheats you out of credit for a project, your friends drift away from you for whatever reasons, the delivery boy delays your meal by half an hour keeping you famished, the neighbors play the vuvuzela late at night while cheering their team at the world cup on TV, your wife nags, your children behave wild, parents are breathing down your neck, crazy drivers on the road, – remember you have a choice in the way you can react.

Journey from the Common Man to Come’on Man

Be UNCOMMON

RELATIONSHIPS

You can’t do without them, that is for sure. It exists. If you do want to maintain it then that also is your relationship. They never remain constant. They constantly evolve. But there is one factor that affects all relationships and that is attitude. It is your attitude that will help make or break your relationship. Good times happen because of the stance you take to a particular situation. And during the bad times, your approach decides on whether you drift apart or some closer.

Death for example can take people apart or get them closer. I remember the death of my grandma brought the whole family closer with my sister donning the mantle that ma granny once held. It could have gone wither way. She could have fallen apart and all of us would have also, but the attitude she took saved us all. There is no better feeling that sitting next to the one you love especially in times when you have lost another loved one.

TRUST
Trust is another key ingredient. It’s like a pair of socks. Its gotta be two and it’s got to match. It’s the foundation of any relationship. When you feel betrayed by a particular situation you have to take a look at it objectively and look at the intent behind the actions. Many a time we feel betrayed, and we probably are by our own perspective and expectations but it need not be that someone else betrayed us. That is nothing but your attitude.

UNDERSTANDING
Understanding. Its difficult understanding the word understanding. Very often it’s misunderstood. Your understanding is also based on your attitude. If you take responsibility to ensure that others understand perfectly what you are communicating and you understand perfectly what others are communicating the relationship work pretty smooth.


Many a time we feel incomplete. No man can live as an island they say [though we can definitely live on one]. We feel we are imperfect, and so we're always searching for somebody to perfect us. We get into a relationship. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still incomplete, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising or sometimes with something more promising. It need not be a person. We do share relationships with inanimate objects as well though we may not realize it. Food, TV, Sports, etc. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.”

YOU AND I
I have a few relationships that I consider real important to me. Some of them have existed from the time I was born, some from my childhood, one from my stay here and one in the very recent past. I cannot define them though. I am limited by vocabulary. They are not water tight compartments and often spill in over to another compartment. So I shall not try to define them or set parameters but instead when I refer to them for other people I shall use generic terms like friend, sibling, and colleague so that someone may have a term to put to it. I do not need one.

You know how important you are to me and the very fact that you are reading this means you are already an integral part of my life for life.