My humble perspectives based on the strokes of colours being painted daily by life on the soul’s canvas…
My take on he+she relationships
As we continue to go through the thick and thin of life, pass the times of adolescence, student life at the University and then enter the “being professional” phase in life; a parallel development is usually going on in the sub-conscious where experiences like heart pounding for the first time while gazing at the beauty of somebody from the opposite gender, usually followed by many immature acts, anxiety, and for many of us even heartbreaks get imprinted on our inner selves. These sequences of events often leave us in a pandemonium, however as one of my beloved poets aptly remarks: Wounds are the places where light enters us; I feel that maturity arrives in a subtle way, just like most of the nature’s processes. Nature doesn’t really rush, but still everything is accomplished. The time frame this journey takes varies from person to person.
My take on all this is inspired by nature as well. As the forces around us reveal, a castle (in this case that of dreams) can only stand tall on top of a solid foundation and that needs solid roots. I feel when two souls approach each other with a dream to build a castle of life-long companionship and a connection tied through a red thread, as opposed to the ones connected by a white thread in most of the worldly scenarios; they’re essentially planting a seed.
Now, as time goes on, seasons come and go, some conducive while others frightening, and there is the need for a heartfelt effort from both to take care of this sweet little existence, which I like to call as “us” stemming out of a “me” and a “you”. At this point, “us” is the same as a cute little baby who barely even knows how to breathe yet, and needs a lot of monitoring and care. 🙂
As the course of nature continues, the clear-hearted efforts from “him” and “her” are rewarded by nature and “us” turns into a sapling, full of life, fresh and now like a baby who knows to smile at both of them, giving them much needed peace whenever they’re stressed in daily lives.
Subsequently, “us” goes on to learn some ways to protect itself from all sorts of dangerous forces in life, just like a baby’s immune system develops strength with time.
As each day passes now and the care continues, “us” develops and exhibits various forms of beauty like leaves, flowers, fruits and also a much needed “shade” for “him” and “her” in the broad and many-a-times harsh times of strong sunlight.
Time goes on, and again the duration varies from pair to pair; but as long as the intent from both is whole-hearted and pure white, “us” grows into a tree, and that most certainly becomes a place for both to return to. At the end of every day’s work, both crave to return to the tree.
At this stage, with each passing day, “us” continues to grow and the relationship which it represents becomes more and more fulfilling and deep-rooted. Gradually, as the famous phrase “growing old together” indicates “he” and “she” start to merge into the tree, and they find themselves as less of ”me” and more of “us”. However, a concept from a Hindi song comes to my mind here, and I feel that not losing their individual peculiarities is crucial as well, since that gives lots of breadth to the tree, and hence more and more shadow for both. The lyrics go like this: “Apne rang gawa’aye bin, meray rangoN mein ghul jao… ” 🙂 … This concludes the first half of this segment.
Well, life, surely, has taught me how it is not supposed to be, as well. In that case, I feel that instead of nurturing roots, mistakenly, “he” and “she” start off with an imaginary tree, and well, initially love its shallow shade and not yet ripe fruits; but both of them still happen to have things that they need to learn; about the way, this world goes… So, as days go by, their tree starts shedding leaves, and eventually branches; with each passing day, they feel the relationship is like a burden that they have to carry; similar to a heavy and dry tree trunk. In this case, the life force ultimately leaves the tree, and that’s what the world refers to as a “breakup”. There are sometimes attempts to re-plant or re-water the dried out tree, but that usually doesn’t help since the soul of “us” usually has already succumbed to egos, and shallow motives.
P.S.: In the first half, marriage is a milestone that happens somewhere in the life of the tree, when both start feeling that presence of the “us” tree is indispensable for their ‘taskeen’ (deep relief) and the arrival at his milestone must not be driven by society, or age. The second one usually never sees this milestone, however, if forced, that ends into an unfortunate phenomenon that our society refers to as ‘divorce’.
Conclusion: In a nutshell, the above discussion sums up to a simple test for compatibility in a relationship. If with each passing day, the “us” part becomes stronger, and more fulfilling for both “him” and “her”; no matter how slow the rate is, positive growth implies an affirmative. This should not be confused with things like “Now, we argue and quarrel a lot!” … Difference of opinion is inevitable, just like tough times. The growth here implies that “he” and “she” feel more comfortable in explaining their inner feelings to each other, and can amicably reach a conclusion or settle if none can be reached. As the beautiful saying goes: Love is to hold hands, even when in disagreement!
In other words, “her” self-respect must naturally turn into “his” respect for him, and vice-versa. Their strengths and weaknesses become combined. This essentially leaves no room for egos or third-party intervention in their translucent protective shield in life, which only communicates with the outside world as a single unit irrespective of who out of the two is actively involved in the communication on behalf of their “us” at a given instant. Now, like other souls on earth, “us” can and does have an ego, but within “us”, both “he” and “she” do not possess one anymore!
And the cup of emotions eternally continues to overflow…
Wow ?