Reflections on Relationships

A person once told me that he believes that there should be no question of self-respect in love and philosophy. The same person said it is important to forget self in such cases. But I don’t know if I agree with that. I refrain from commenting about the philosophy aspect since I have not spent much time thinking about the impact of a particular philosophy on my life, but about personal relationships I do have very specific views and opinions. They could very well be erroneous but I wish to at least state them. At times, my thoughts become clearer if I put them down such that I can actually see them.

I agree that the ego should not come anywhere into picture here, but the individuality and identity, and hence self-respect, of each person involved is so very important. Why should I give up being myself just because another person thinks I should be different? Every person that enters my life will obviously influence me and hence my responses to some extent. But the individual that I am shall never change, ought not to change! It is tempting to believe that love will make a person able to give up all sense of “I” and also cease to exist for his or herself alone.

But these seem childishly romantic concepts…Uh oh! Let’s just leave that aside…

Since I am writing about my take on relationships anyway, let’s go on to that most special of all relationships…the parent-child bond. I firmly believe that the mother and father are hugely responsible for the kind of human being that a person becomes. Every person is essentially a different individual but the values of honesty, loyalty, commitment to truth and sincerity are eternal and ought not to change in this world. More often than not, the respect that a child has for these is a reflection on how the parents rate these values.

Suppose I, as a parent, don’t think even once about my flagrant disregard for all the afore-mentioned values, how can my child ever learn to respect the same? I think it is important to educate all parents, in fact all would-be parents too, about how to bring up their child. The parent must be able to give the child a sense of self-worth along with a wholehearted belief in the worthiness of all society. It is only if children care for the society they live in that they will stop and think of their fellow-beings. It is also important to allow the child to face new experiences and make his/her own mistakes…and to learn to handle these in a logical manner. Unless we bring up our new generation to be a sensible and responsible one, the dream of a perfectly rational society of men shall never take any tangible shape!

Perhaps all those in today’s generation, who dream of a better, beautiful society, must choose as their profession the education of young minds…so as to reverse the damage and to prevent further destruction of these young minds and soul. Being a teacher must be such a challenging task. A teacher can never be a substitute for the parent but he/she must be ready to step in, in case the parents shirk their responsibility. At times the child trusts the teacher so much more than anybody else and it is important that such trust never be destroyed! The betrayal of trust is a most heinous crime and a young child may never be willing to freely give his/her trust again if it is broken once!

Essentially, though every person is solely responsible for his/her actions, it is important to let each person learn early on in life to face the consequences of every action and hence learn to think well and long before taking any decision. And this lesson can be best learnt at home. The purity of a young person’s mind amazes me…why do we as a society seek to destroy this very beauty at every step so that we can step aside later and lament the loss of such a precious mind?