As the Valentine day gets closer, is you heart somersaulting or is it palpitating? Are you agitated thinking whether your first valentine will remain your last valentine? Or do the pre-valentine days drive you desperately in hunt for a valentine?
Here are some thoughts that you could preserve as your valentine day secret tips.
Loving relationships thrive on acceptance and strangle on expectations. They begin with acceptance and end with expectations. When the focus changes from acceptance to expectation, the focus is effectively shifting from ‘we’ to ‘me’.
In the Ramayana, we find that the love story of Dasaratha and Keikeyi grew when they set aside their personal needs and focused on each other’s needs. Keikeyi was ready to risk her life to assist Dasaratha in wars. When he gave her two boons, she was so focused on his needs that she couldn’t even think of her personal wants. But what made her change so much later? A change in the externals of relationships occurs when there is change in motto or loyalty on the internal level. Between two people, the common center has to be selfless love. When this common center is displaced by individual selfish centers, mutual love turns into self-centered love and lovers turn into strangers.
In love, conditions and satisfaction are inversely proportional to each other. The more conditions you put on one another, the lesser you experience satisfaction in the relationship. The more you have loyalty towards personal satisfaction, the lesser you have the ability for reciprocal appreciation.
Relationships have to be treated like a kite. For it to soar high, you have to pull the string towards yourself. If you tug the string away from yourself, the kite will soon come falling down. Every human has some shortcomings. Every time you accept the other’s shortcomings, you are pulling the string of relationships towards yourself. And every time you expect others to align with your needs, you are pushing the string of relationships away from yourself.
Why don’t we find any mention of Duryodhana’s love story with Bhanumati in the Mahabharata? Because for Duryodhana, relationships were never a need, they were strategies to satisfy his needs. Any relationship that helped him achieve his ambition, he prioritized and those that didn’t, remained hidden and neglected forever.
We will do good to remember that relationships don’t need us, it is we who need relationships. If there is any need we can be selfish about, it is this need. And to satisfy this need, all other needs can be sacrificed. Valentine Day essentially is symbolic of periodic sacrifice to celebrate eternal love.
Take note!
Love thrives on acceptance and is strangled with expectations. A shift from acceptance to expectations implies a shift from ‘we’ to ‘me’.
In love, conditions and satisfaction are inversely proportional. More the conditions, less satisfying is the relationship.
Need for personal satisfaction has to be sacrificed to fulfil need for a loving relationship because our need for relationship cannot be done away with. It is over and above all needs.
Valentine Day is symbolic of periodic sacrifice to celebrate eternal love.
(The writer is an author, Tedx speaker, story-teller, corporate trainer and visiting faculty in several premier management schools)
