Saturday, 2 March 2013

Rules we live by..


Over the last few days I have been thinking deeply about the rules we make in our lives, our own moral code of conduct. What is right? Who we should speak with? Why? What should be our environment like? What programs on TV our kids need to watch? How should we approach and manage relationships (that are naturally complex!)? etc etc…

I was watching a complicated Bollywood flick that opened my eyes to this fact! Right and wrong is so dependent on the perspective of the person looking at the situation. It’s all so true and so relative, this right and wrong. And isn’t life relative? Why then are we so firm on our rights and wrongs in life? More importantly, in all our relationships, we impose our rights and wrongs on somebody else who may never see something the way we see them!

We may often have a knowing of this at the gut level. But how many of us actually respect this for what it is and not impose it on others? Why should everybody else live on the rules we create for them? Or for ourselves that others are forced to live by because we love them or they are important to us? As I became more and more conscious of this, I realized my own set of rules that I may inadvertently impose on others and started questioning them. Is it because of our needs, our expectations of others? Is it because we feel we know it best based on our experience in life?

Why not let go and let people be as they are? Why not accept people for who they are and respect their perspective of things? Why not appreciate another point of view and evaluate our lives and our expectations of things in this new light? Would this not make things easier for us and for people around us? Or do you think it will further complicate our already exciting lives? Is acceptance of each other  necessarily be driven by how we want things to be driven?

Most importantly should we not try and give to the limit acceptable to us basis the needs of the other? And when it crosses our acceptable level of tolerance (as per our rules), stop but communicate why. Would that not help us have better happier times with people around us?

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