In this insightful piece, Sadhguru explores the complex dynamics of relationships within families and among loved ones, offering valuable guidance on handling pressures and nurturing harmony. Discover the importance of nurtering growth, finding your own source of joy, and cultivating self-sufficiency for a fulfilling life.
Question: When living within a family and surrounded by loved ones, we often feel the pressure to abide by their opinions and expectations, which can sometimes make us very unhappy. How to build better relationships?
Sadhguru: These people are not your loved ones; they are your extra limbs. You are unable to stand on two legs, so you need four, eight, twelve, or however many. These extra limbs can become tangled if they are not well-coordinated.
One way to ensure smooth functioning is by creating a high level of connectedness, which should not be emotional. Emotional connectedness tends to bring dependency. Emotion is something to be enjoyed; it is the juice of life. You can make your thoughts and body work, but do not try to make your emotions work.
Initially, saying “I love you” might be effective, but over time, trying to make emotions work for you can make life more difficult. This is because emotions are not meant for work; they are meant to sweeten life. The mind and body should be the ones working, while emotions should just be there, like a flower.
You do not make flowers work; they simply exist, and that is all. Emotions are similar – they are just there, pleasant and wonderful. If you try to make them work or extract life from those around you by using your emotions, it is bound to turn ugly.
As a result, family life can become extremely burdensome. The nastiest things often happen within the confines of people’s homes – not on the streets or elsewhere – but among those who are meant to be close. This is because people are trying to use their emotions to get certain things.
If you try to use your emotions to get something, it may work initially. But when you push it further, then life can turn incredibly nasty among people who are supposed to care for each other. The nastiest situations happen not among enemies but among so-called loved ones.
People have their opinions. If you love someone, you should have no opinion. Love means to be willing to nurture another life without forming opinions. An opinion is a way of forcing a person into a restrictive mold. Love means nurturing a person into a new possibility. Love and opinions cannot go together.
If it is truly a loving relationship, there should be no opinions, just nurturing. You only make some judgments in the moment to nurture them better. When you have children at home, you must make some judgments about where they are right now in order to support them toward their next possibility, rather than forming an opinion about them. If you form an opinion about them, it means you have no interest in nurturing their life into a new possibility – you only want to fix them within the confines of your opinion, and you are disappointed if they do not go by your opinion. That is not how it works.
If you want to live closely with others, the relationship should be based on nurturing, not on being opinionated. Such relationships are bound to fail because the fundamental mechanics are wrong. It may work temporarily because of the novelty of the situation or the initial honeymoon phase, but in the long run, it will not work.
You experience love as a certain sweetness of emotion within yourself. This feeling can be triggered when you look at someone, or simply by being around them. It does not matter who stimulates the emotion; what is important is that the experience happens within you.
It is wonderful that you experience such sweetness of emotion. But you are using the other person as a key to open up an experience within you. Why are you using a key when there is no lock, no door, and no barrier? It is only because you are a “push-start machine.” A push-start machine is like an old car that needs to be pushed to start, like an Ambassador from twenty-five years ago.
Now, all cars have self-start, many of them even remote start – this is a technological upgrade. Would you like to upgrade your technology so that you are on self-start? If you wake up in the morning, you are overflowing with joy, love, and exuberance, by yourself – you do not need anyone to stimulate you. If you would like to be a self-start machine, you must come to us.
If you are currently in love, it is fine. But it is important that you are a self-start machine. Otherwise, after some time, you try to extract happiness from the other person. That is when love affairs become tedious and horrible because you are trying to extract happiness from the other person. When it comes to joy, love, and the exuberance of life, you must be the source of it. Other things are shared in life.
There are two ways to enter into a relationship. One way is because you want to extract something from someone. Another way is because you want to share something with someone. If you are out to share, your life will be good. If you are out to extract, when they close the tap, it is going to get terrible and nasty.
You may have seen people who thought they are absolute lovers, and how terrible it becomes for many of them. Not because there is anything wrong with them, but simply because they started off on the wrong footing, thinking “this person is the source of my joy.” No – joy or misery, the source is within you.
It is for you to decide. If you are a joyful human being, they will also want to be with you. If you are a miserable human being, they will endure you for some time.
Let me tell you a joke. On a certain day, Shankaran Pillai went for a walk in a park in the evening. He saw a young, pretty woman sitting on a bench. He went and sat down on the same bench. After some time, he moved a little closer. She moved a little away. After a few minutes, he again moved a little closer. She moved a little away. Again, he moved closer. By then, she was at the end of the bench, and she pushed him away.
Shankaran Pillai waited for two minutes for the sun to reach the right angle. Then, he went down on his knees and said, “I love you. I love you like I have never loved anybody in my life.” Women can be fools for love. Had it been the middle of the afternoon, she would not have believed a thing. But the sun was setting, the ambience was right, and nature took its course. Then, he looked at his watch, and it was eight o'clock in the evening. He got up and said, “I need to go.” She asked, “Where are you going? You said you love me!” He replied, “My wife is waiting; I need to go.”
“I love you” is often used by people as an “open sesame” to get something they want. Their needs may be physical, psychological, emotional, financial, or social. This mantra is employed to fulfill these needs, and it works half the time. But it is essential to experience the joy of being loving. The sweetness of emotion is needed for you to take really big steps in life. If there is no sweetness of love in your heart, trying to take big steps in the world can lead to frustration.
