Questioner: I often find myself caught between my parents when they are having a fight. This is a very confusing situation. How to handle it?
Sadhguru: Adults are usually fighting over little things. Unfortunately, these fights can get so ugly that they make everyone’s life ugly. This is not the reason why they came together. They came together with enormous love, affection, and longing, but now it has turned out like this. If you witness such things at an early age, you must make up your mind that you are not going to conduct your life like that. This is not just between husband and wife – this is in any relationship. If the person you sit next to unknowingly steps on your clothing or something, you become like a porcupine.
Whatever comes your way, make it a basis of your growth, maturity, and wellbeing.
A porcupine is an appropriate example for these quarrels at home. Initially, they show their quills; then, they try to mock charge. Somewhere, they lose control, and after some time, the pokes become real. Relationships, as beautiful as they can be, can become the ugliest part of your life if you do not conduct them right. They turn out like that not necessarily because someone did something wrong – it simply happens. Most of the time, there is no substance to what people fight about, but it gathers so much significance.
People fall apart; ugly things happen. Probably anyone who has lived long enough has had a bad relationship at some point. However meticulously you try to conduct it, it somewhere happens. When other people say ugly things to you, make nasty accusations against you, or do nasty things to you – to look beyond that and walk gracefully in life takes a certain sense within you.
Don’t Get Into a Spiral of Nastiness
Everyone should come to this sense rather than getting into the turmoil of whatever nastiness is happening in the country, community, or family. If we rise above that, we will become successful human beings. Otherwise, I have seen so many brilliant people, people with wonderful capabilities, getting into the spiral of nasty relationships. Never let these things happen to you.
If you bring yourself to a state within yourself where how joyful or miserable you are is determined by you and no one else, you will see that even if someone throws stones at you, once the stone-pelting is over, you can come out joyfully.
Someone says something nasty because something nasty is happening within them.
In the last few decades of being in the public eye, I have seen a lot of stone-pelting. People have been throwing all kinds of accusations at me. On a small scale, these kinds of things are happening within families too. Someone says something nasty because something nasty is happening within them. You cannot spit out something nasty unless something nasty is happening within you. So, if someone spits out something nasty, they need your love, compassion, or distance. Initially, try love; if it does not work, compassion; if that does not work, distance. But do not get into the spiral of nastiness because it will suck you in, and there will be no end to it.
As a young child, what is happening with the parents is a big issue. But after some time, you will see that what they do or do not do does not affect your life – you will grow beyond that. Right now, if your parents are offering you this opportunity to grow beyond this very quickly, please make use of it. This one thing everyone must do – no matter what comes toward you, you must make it a stepping stone for yourself.
Shankaran Pillai’s Smart Ass
It so happened that Shankaran Pillai had an old donkey. He tried to sell it, but no one wanted to buy it. Then, one day in the morning, the donkey was braying piteously because it had fallen into an open, dried-up well. The donkey was terrified; wanting to come out, it made terrible noises. Shankaran Pillai’s friends and neighboring farmers came and saw the situation. They said, “This is a useless old donkey. Anyway we told you a long time ago that you must close this dry well. Let us close it with the donkey inside.”
They started putting basketfuls of mud into the well. Whenever a basketful of mud fell on the donkey, the donkey shook off the mud and stood on top of it. Like that, it kept going up. Then they saw, “Wow! This is a really smart ass!” As they threw more and more mud, it came up and eventually walked out. Suddenly, Shankaran Pillai really loved this intelligent donkey. He went and tried to hug it, but the donkey turned around, kicked him in the face, and trotted away.
No matter what life throws at you, shake it off and stand on it. Every experience in your life should make you better, richer. Do not look for sweet experiences. Whatever comes your way, make it a basis of your growth, maturity, and wellbeing. You can never decide what the world will throw at you, but what you make out of it is one hundred percent yours. You must make the best thing out of everything that comes toward you.
Whatever comes your way, make it a basis of your growth, maturity, and wellbeing.
If a lot of ugly incidents happen in your life when you are young, you must become wiser than everyone else sooner than everyone else. But most people choose to become wounded. People are carrying their wounds like a badge, “You know what happened to me?” What other people did to you is not the question. What you have done to yourself is the big question. You must do the best.
