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Marriage: Should your parents decide?

Marriage: Should your parents decide?

In an age where identity and independence are given foremost importance, those who want to go the traditional way, i.e. let their parents choose their life partner, find themselves in a dilemma. Is this the best thing to do? Several questions come up, because after all, this is a decision that will affect the rest of your life, potentially many decades.

The first question you should be asking yourself is whether you should be getting married, at all. If you find a good enough reason to do so, we come to the question of how we’d be able to take the right decision.

It would be wise to look at a few parameters first – Would you say that you are a good judge of people? Do you frequently find that friends turned out to be quite different from what you first imagined them to be? How about your parents? Would you say that they are a good judge of people? Have they been able to offer you sound advice regarding your friends, and been right? A fair analysis of these questions would give you a good idea of who has a better capability to assess people – and this is important, because people are on their best behaviour when seeking out their life partner.

Now if you’re good at assessing people, no problem, right? Go ahead and make your choice. But if you would rather let your parents take the lead, here are a few more pointers to keep in mind.

If your parents were to choose a partner for you, what is of foremost importance is whether they truly understand you. Or do they have a stereotyped image of you in mind, labeling you based on a few incidents from your past? If a person does not understand you as a person, how would they know who you would be compatible with?

Also, no matter who is choosing a partner for you, everyone is eventually just looking for one type of person – the sort of partner THEY would want for themselves. Very rarely does anyone have your needs in mind, and this is because we all have an image of the perfect partner drawn up in our minds based on our own needs, and we apply this standard to everyone. So, it is important to find out what qualities your parents prioritise in a person, and whether those are the same things you seek.

Many times, parents are more worried about the financial status, the history of the family, the security, etc, than the actual compatibility of the couple. This could be disastrous, even more so if the family is using it’s financial or social status to hide the internal dynamics of their family.

Ultimately, no matter who you choose, there will be a few surprises and a few disappointments. Marriage is more about giving, than receiving and this is a bond one must enter with that attitude. As a man, you would need to take extra care that your new wife is able to adjust to the new environment. She is often in shock because things turn out be drastically different from the way her family does it. As a woman, you need to be aware that things will be different, and just because they are different, does not mean that they are wrong. A new addition to the family changes old family equations and everyone needs time to readjust.

Marriage: Is it Important?

Marriage: Is it Important?

Frequently, a young man or woman will walk in for therapy, and when I ask them what it is they want, they quip that they want help because they are unable to get married. And when I ask them why, the answers are varied, sometimes even non-existent.

While on the one hand today’s generation is raised to be independent and individualistic, they are also largely raised to seek happiness outside of themselves. Add to this years of conditioning through movies that there is ‘the one’ waiting for you just as desperately as you are waiting for him/her, and it is a dangerous combination.

If you cannot be happy when single, it is highly unlikely that you will be happy when in a relationship. Granted – a new relationship has the potential to bring untold ‘highs’, leaving you reeling and starry eyed. But when the magic fades, you are left to cope with the same miseries that plagued you before the relationship. Many studies show that the high today lasts for about 2 years, before people are back to the level of happiness they were at, before marriage.

A marriage has the highest chances for success if it is entered by two individuals who have a desire to share, to give, instead of expectations, and a desire to receive. And even then, it is still a chance, because people change. What may be perfect for you today, may not be perfect for you twenty years down the line.

So, is marriage worth it? The answer varies widely. For a person who seeks happiness in a relationship, it would be worth it for a couple of years, following which the situation might be quite different. For an independent person who just isn’t ready for a relationship, it might bring them years of misery. And for yet another person, it might be a life changing opportunity, meeting a person who they can embrace in totality, and who embraces them for who they are, helping each other lift up to greater levels of awareness and bliss.

It is a personal choice which is bound to bring difficult times if not thought through carefully, or blissful times if entered into as one would enter a temple – head bowed and hands joined.

Eating your way to Death?

Eating your way to Death?

I recently came across a question ‘Should I eat to live or live to eat?’ in a forum. Interesting! It reminded me of a discussion with a few friends, who felt that good food was the most satisfying thing on earth.

We always hear about people smoking too much, drinking too much, etc. Eating too much, however, rarely seems to be a vice. People look at such people with pity. The fat people themselves, meanwhile, convince themselves that it is hereditary. Their parents are fat, their siblings are fat, and they are fat too. It doesn’t ever occur to them that all these people have the same eating habits too, which is why they are all of the same shape.

I have nothing against overweight people. Most of the times, they are really sweet, jovial people. What I’m trying to point out here is, overeating IS a vice. It is done to please the senses, and in that respect, is equivalent to smoking, drinking, or having sex. None of these things are bad in moderation. But too much – becomes an addiction and eats up your life.

Did you know that being overweight increases your chances of dying? There is an overwhelming evidence that for each 10% increase of weight (above normal), mortality increases by 20%. (from The Life Extension Foundation Guide to Better Health by Dr Harry J. Johnson) This means, that if you are 60kg today instead of your average 50kg, you are 40% more likely to die as compared to your 50kg counterpart.

I know people who would scoff at the idea of fasting. Others who fast are looked down upon as religious fools. Fasting is not good if done too often, but if you think that you can’t survive a single day without any food at all, you need to do a rethink. It isn’t about dieting, it isn’t about a religion, nor is it about cleansing your body. It is about self-control.

It gives you better control over your body. It teaches you to resist temptation. It teaches you to focus your mind – because you’ll eventually have to take your mind off food, so you stop feeling hungry. And then, it teaches you sympathy for people who rarely get to eat.

Eat to live. To survive. If you fill all the parts of a car with petrol, you might end up burning it. What do you think you do to your body when you fill it up with too much fuel – food?

Chuck that Role Model

Chuck that Role Model

I was recently asked to fill a ‘Know Me’ questionnaire at office, to be pinned up on the notice-board. One of the fields was ‘Role Model’. Not a very unusual one, but it got me thinking.

Why do we need a role model? To me, having a role model is nothing but a weakness – you restrict yourself by wanting to be like someone else.

When a friend of mine was asked why he wasn’t following his very successful parents’ footsteps by joining their business, he said, ‘I am walking in their footsteps. Just like them, I’m starting from scratch and carving my own career!’

What we need to learn from icons is their approach to life, problems, and ability to remain calm in apparently disastrous situations. We need to follow the direction in which they walked, not the path they took.

It is often said that there is no set formula for success. I disagree. A study of successes will reveal the same common factors – perseverance, working smart, not necessarily hard, dedication and focus. An age old proverb sums this up very well – “The man who wakes up one morning to find himself famous has not been asleep”

Tej Parkhiji says ‘Sabki Geeta alag hai’, implying that everyone has different lessons to learn. In the same vein, everyone striving towards success, faces different problems and requires different approaches to deal with them. Problems can be solved effectively only if you analyze and solve the situation yourself, and not when you try to find out how your role model solved it – his situation might have been different.

Chuck your role model – choose to truly follow his/ her footsteps, by being your own person, and being your own role model. Because, I’m sure that they didn’t try to follow anyone’s footsteps!

Thank God For Your Enemies

Thank God For Your Enemies

A reiki student recently asked me ‘So after I learn Reiki, I will never fall sick and never have problems, right?’ I tried to suppress a smile as I told him that on the contrary, he might have more complex problems!

We regard problems like something external, an irritant or a hinderance that shouldn’t be there but somehow is, and must be removed ASAP. We couldn’t be more wrong. A problem is given to you, to help you learn a lesson the best way – hands on, and grow into a better human being. If you choose to turn around and face your problems instead of running away from them, you will gain a lot, and also learn lessons more easily.

Problems are like quicksand – the more you struggle, the deeper you get. What you need to do instead, is keep your cool, realise that this problem is a gift and not a punishment, and start working towards solving it.

Enemies are people we whole-heartedly despise, because they cause us problems and make our lives miserable. Lets take another look at it. I believe that your enemies do more for you, than your friends. These are people who do bad to you, and face negative consequences for them later on. All this for what? So that you learn more lessons, and grow faster!

The next time someone causes you problems, thank them for making your life miserable. For, it is these people who will help you take your life to the heights you only dream of today.

Are Your Priorities Right?

Are Your Priorities Right?

I came across a very interesting short story named ‘The Undomestic Goddess’, yesterday. It is the story of a very successful, top lawyer, who runs away from her life when she realises that she made a huge mistake. She takes up a job as a housekeeper in a small village, thinking that she’d go back the moment things were set right. Instead, she learns an entire new way of life – where the stress is absent and the weekends are free.

She later realises that she had been framed. She goes back and reclaims her dignity, but finally returns to her $500 per week housekeeper job, as opposed to the $500 per hour she was earning before.

It is a realisation that comes to a very select, lucky few. A lot of people I know, spend their youth toiling away day and night, oblivious to the meaning of fun, love and joy. Today, enjoyment means smoking a cigarette, downing half a dozen pegs, and letting ones hair down and partying. I genuinely pity people who have to knock themselves out of their senses so that they can pretend to themselves that they are enjoying.

We all celebrate Independence day here in India, but we are all still slaves. We are still so financially insecure, that we just want more and more money. Irrespective of what it costs us. A lot of people I know, are going to wake up one day, realise that they have nothing but money left with them anymore.

Ask yourself this question. If you died tomorrow, or even this very instant, would you regret it? If your answer is not a definite NO, you have some rethinking to do.

The Bhagwad Geeta says that youth is the time one should spend earning. Not just money, but relationships, love, respect and experience – of LIVING life. If all your money was lost today, would you have any other riches left?

Your Health in Your Hands

Your Health in Your Hands

This weekend, as I read Maya Tiwari’s story of how she fought and ultimately won over terminal cancer, I came upon an interesting statement. She said that through her ten surgeries, she had full faith in the doctors, and trusted that they would cure her. During her tenth surgery, she realised that unless she went away from the medical establishments, she would certainly die. She realised that her fate was in her hands.

It is a mistake most of us often make. A lot of the people I know, believe that doctors can always be counted on, to solve one’s health problem. I wish that were true. Allopathy doctors are here to numb our symptoms – but the cause still remains.

Nevertheless, the point I’m trying to make here is, that your health is your responsibility. You are not a victim of a disease. You only fall sick when you subconsciously/ consciously want to, and the moment you realise it, you will either stop falling sick, or your sickness will stop affecting you as much it now does.

Sickness is not a problem, it is just an indication that something is wrong, either in your mind, or in your lifestyle. Often, an illness is your body’s way of begging you to pay attention to certain aspects. What do you do? You pop a pill and forget about it. And what does your body do? It finds another disease.

It is time we owned up to our health problems and took the initiative to cure ourselves. In most occasions, a simple determination to get alright, works. In other cases, we can let our bodies guide us towards the right kind of foods. I have seen many worry about their health, resist their disease too, but never take any action towards eliminating it. That is what I call a pseudo-concern. Your worry is your way of convincing yourself that you’re trying to become ok. A balanced approach would be to accept the disease or the pain, and take proactive steps to improve the condition.

I usually discourage the use of antibiotics because they weaken the body by doing its fighting for it. Painkillers work by simply numbing the pain signals to the brain. After all, no one can cure you but yourself, and if you have to take help, you might as well turn to a wholistic system of healing which will strengthen your body in the long and short run.

Its Just Faith! Or is it?

Its Just Faith! Or is it?

When I talk about miraculous healing, many refuse to take it as proof that the system works. They brush it off as a result of faith. How convenient. Surprisingly, I never find people saying that an operation cured a person because of faith. I say surprising, because thats exactly what it is. Why is it that some operations fail, while the same operation done on another person is a complete success? Why is it that on one occasion, some pill works perfectly for you, but on another day, it just doesn’t seem to work?

A study was conducted, where a group was divided into two; one group was given a paracetamol (crocin) and the other was given a placebo ( a fake pill), but told that it was a paracetamol. For every five that were given a paracetamol, 2 were cured. For every 5 given the placebo, 2 were cured as well. It is, afterall, all in the mind.

For all those who refute alternative therapy as ‘just faith’, I have only one question to ask. If faith can cure people without medicines, then why shouldn’t we have faith? There are thousands of instances where doctors gave a person 2-6 months to live, the patient trashed the medical system and decided to live life on his/ her terms, and then went on to live many, many more years. Google Maya Tiwari, if you want a living example. There are others who had similar experiences with pranayama, laughter therapy, etc.

Science has also proven that having unshakable faith opens us up to a host of things normally not available to us. Reader’s Digest recently published an article on how those who believe in ghosts and ESP were able to access information from their subconscious minds. They did a test where people were shown a set of cards on a computer screen and asked to predict the card which the computer will choose.

What the participants did not know, was that for a fraction of a second the card which would be chosen, was flashed on the screen. The time interval was short enough for the eyes not to register it, but long enough for the subconscious mind to note. Those who believed in the supernatural got most of the cards right, and those who didn’t got most of the guesses wrong. The ‘intuition’ in this case, was just a simple connection with their subconscious minds. By having faith, you might be helping yourself evolve.

To sum it all up, I’ll put it this way. If faith can cure people of even terminal diseases, then they are utter fools, who do not believe.

The Religious, Spiritual and the Atheists

The Religious, Spiritual and the Atheists

A lot of misery has been inflicted upon the world in the name of religion. Of course, there are plenty of peace loving religious people out there too, who are identified in their belief systems about their favorite deity (or the lack of one, depending on the religion)

It is common among educated people to look down upon the religious, because they are blind believers. But the more I look around, the more I observe that people are really all the same, irrespective of their belief systems.

Ultimately, everyone has a belief system that they will defend tooth and nail, in order to preserve their identity. Atheists are blind believers too, most of them believe blindly in science. I say blindly, because they selectively believe in studies that appeal to their set of beliefs. Science is not only that which has been proven in a double blind scientific study. Many of these studies are rigged by benefiting parties anyway. Science is about an attitude in life – being open to the experiences in life and maintaining an awareness that not all questions have answers. A really scientific person is more likely to be an agnostic than an atheist.

Same with the ‘spiritual’ – those obsessed with spiritual growth, and being a better person everyday. They are busy chasing the ultimate goal – enlightenment, and often all those who aren’t involved in the chase are looked down upon. Spirituality is a very profitable, marketable industry today, selling products from incense to organic vegetables to big, expensive workshops. Those who are tired of chasing material pleasures now have something new, something much more covetable, to chase. These are the new age ‘spiritual’ group of people,.

Real spirituality is about the spirit. The spirit does not grow, the spirit is unchangeable. The phrase ‘spiritual growth’ is an oxymoron. There is no such thing. A spiritual person rests in the spirit and has nothing to chase. Just as one would find blind, obsessed people in all categories – religious, atheists and spiritual, one would find really ‘spiritual’ people in all categories as well. Ultimately, people are the same everywhere. Labels do not make anyone better or worse. Labels are just labels.

A Product of Our Circumstances

A Product of Our Circumstances

“If I was in his place, I wouldn’t have done that” How often do we use that statement, albeit in different forms? It sounds very reassuring to make a statement like that, but the fact is, if we were in someone else’s place, we’d be doing exactly what they do, no matter how stupid it looks to us.

Every individual is a product of the circumstances in their past, both this life and the previous. Little things that happen during our childhood mould our outlook in life. When we undergo different types of experiences, we subconsciously form different types of opinions. As we grow older, we slowly form our behaviour pattern based on these instances. A child who had to cry out everytime he needed something, will grow up with the opinion that one never gets anything unless one throws a tantrum – and this is how he will deal with every similar circumstance.

Somewhere down the line though – when there is a change of environment or people, we need to unlearn these lessons and form new behaviour patterns again. This is where almost all of us falter. We reapply our childhood lessons to adult situations, and leave the door to misery wide open.

If someone reacts in a particular way to a situation, he has his entire past to blame for it. And therefore, if you ever comment that you would have reacted differently if you were someone else, think again. You are a product of a totally different set of circumstances.

Some of us are lucky to realize, that we don’t really have to be a product of our circumstances – we can choose to unlearn lessons, choose to learn lessons from others. Ironically, this realization too, is a product of our circumstances!