A highway where cars, trucks, and buses move very smoothly. Every vehicle follows the rules, maintains a safe distance, and keeps a steady speed. A hotel where every decorative item, chair, piece of furniture, and flower is very nicely arranged. A garden where the gardener has kept the plants in excellent shape. A relationship where both partners know their boundaries well, respect each other, and give each other space. A society where systems are in place, people follow the norms, and no one backstabs anyone else. A place where the weather is neither too hot nor too cold, and where walking under the open sky is fun.
All the great systems aim at harmony. They are based on the concept of "workability". Live and let life. Respect others and get respected. Respect boundaries in relationships. All the vehicles on the highway are individual units, and yet they maintain harmony on the road. Harmony has its own attraction and utility. Who would like to drive on a highway full of traffic jams, where vehicles move erratically, or where someone may come from the wrong side at any time? Who would like a hotel where everything is in disorder? Who would like a relationship where partners fight every now and then? Who would like to live in a society where people follow no rules? Harmony is any day more attractive than disharmony.
Imagine people living in their comfortable apartments in a building but having no relationship with each other. What would life be like in that building? Would we want to live in a building with no social life? Most people would not like it. This is because our natural instinct is to meet people, mix with them, get to know each other, and share emotions. We don't like isolation and solitude. That's why the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita provides that no prisoner can be punished with solitary confinement for too long. This is because a person will go mad if he is kept in solitary confinement for a long time. That's why buildings and colonies where people celebrate festivals together and build emotional bonds are liked by everyone.
But the question remains: "Do we really share?" "Do we really open up?" I have been researching astrology for the last 15 years. In the process, so many people consulted their charts. When I look at their charts and enter their dark chambers, they suddenly open up and tell me their deepest secrets, which they generally don't share even with their closest relatives. I realised closeness is a myth, and people generally maintain a sense of separation from everyone. I don't think people share their darkest secrets with anyone. Why? Because we don't feel safe enough with anyone to disclose them. We worry we might be blackmailed later. We don't trust that the other person will keep it secret. Somehow, we don't want our image, which we have planted in the minds of people around us, to be damaged. That's why we are utmost cautious.
These secrets may be only a few or many. It does not matter much. What matters is how deeply we identify with the self-image which we want to protect. Some time back, I watched the movie "Kamla Ki Maut" where Pankaj Kapoor played the role of a father who is worried about the incident in his chawl where a girl became pregnant before marriage and committed suicide. He worries about his daughters and recalls his past, when he too had a similar relationship. He wants to tell his wife but stops himself, realising that disclosing it will spoil their relationship. To keep the relationship workable, he decides to keep the secret hidden in the dark chamber of his mind. He chooses workability over transparency.
Workable relationships may look attractive from a distance; up close, however, they feel suffocating. At the same time, transparency is not easy. Transparency demands that we let the other person know even our darkest secrets. It also demands that we develop the capacity to understand the other person's life. If two friends live in different worlds, one in a small village and the other travelling the globe, the first must work hard to develop the capacity to understand his friend's experiences. A scientist cannot share his experience with a friend who has no interest in science. Sharing means merging, which can't happen until one of them retains that secret dark chamber or can't understand the other's language. Neither is easy because, generally, we never make the other person a priority. Instead, we either maintain that self-image by keeping the secrets of that dark chamber, or we live comfortably rather than building the capacity to understand the other. Sharing is never one-way traffic. Both people have to be equally eager and make real effort. It feels so strange that, most of the time, we prefer to stay with our ego rather than set out on such a beautiful journey of sharing. We waste our beautiful lives on mindless ego pursuits, and the strangest thing is that the ego makes us feel super-intelligent while doing this stupidity.
Comments