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Introduction
Does ‘Marriage’ in your mind's eye appear like a beautiful
dream where your soul attains that state of perfect happiness, bliss
and peace in the loving arms of your jeevan saathi?
Wake up! Marriage involves hard work! Not just a little bit of cosmetic
pruning and weeding. You really need to walk around with a small
shovel, can of fresh water, some nourishing enrichment and a little
trashcan. Why? you may ask! Why such a mechanical approach to an
institution that has been ordained by the gods, sanctified and certified
by the priests and granted legal and social acceptance by society?
There may be some preconceived ideas or notions in your head that
you need to trash or stash away in a 'recycle bin' which you must
try and permanently delete from your memory and way of life in order
to lead a happy, comfortable and mutually satisfying married life.
Check out the influential factors around you, in your life, in your
neighbourhood, that could have played a role in making marriage
appear as a dark, threatening and ominous cloud. We often forget
the enormous amount of emotional baggage that we carry from childhood
onwards. We forget the times when subtle impressions of what people
spoke, how people behaved and how they reacted have stayed on to
occupy larger than life spaces in key corners of our brain. These
are some of the things that we need to watch out for - getting over
preconceived ideas, notions and prejudices about marriage.
If you could take a torchlight and flash through the grey matter
in your brain, you may be amazed to see the amount of emotional
garbage you have accumulated over the years. You could call it conditioned
responses or maybe even preferred pathways of thinking, but if many
of these are negative, obsolete or totally drain your emotional
energy leaving you mentally exhausted, then maybe you need to check
out again and sweep out those dark, meandering thoughts that can
simply cloud the way you feel about life and marriage.
Try to remember your childhood
Go back to your childhood. Childhood! The time when so many of your
attitudes, preferences, likes and dislikes were moulded, formed
and stayed. A simple exercise that you could carry out to get closer
to understanding yourself would be to carry out these sitting sessions
with yourself. Don't worry if you feel a little awkward in the beginning,
you will get used to it.
You need to find a place where you can sit quietly and ponder upon
your happiest childhood memories. Do this for an hour or so every
week. At the end of your session, you should be able to record in
detail some of the things that fascinated you. Try and recollect
what were the things you really enjoyed doing.
Questions that you need to ask yourself
Ask yourself what are the examples of great marriages that you have
seen: Try and see if you can recollect any snatches of conversation,
any action that your parents did, or may be it was your friend's
parents, or may be someone in the neighbourhood, at whose house
you have spent some time, which persist in your mind about what
a great marriage feels like to you.
Understand and evaluate the role of the positive and negative
influences in your life:
There are ways and ways in which our thoughts are subconsciously
influenced? Remember, although it is conventionally believed that
most of our attitudes are shaped for life based on how we perceived
the world when we were young, that theory is getting quite a bit
of shaking up. For most of us are really a lot more flexible than
that and can continuously mould and adapt ourselves to changing
circumstances and current situations.
Understand the role of the critical factors influencing
you:
When you carry out this exercise, at all times avoid being judgmental.
That can be devastating! Especially if based on your observations
of all those familiar faces around you who have stood by you during
your good times and bad times, that you are now judging that very
personal factor in their lives - their marriage.
Remember at all times that you are not someone to judge or conclude
anything about anyone, because everyone has their own individual
circumstances which may make their actions just the right thing
for them to do in their lives.
However, you should do this exercise simply so that you can learn
what it is that makes for a good marriage, what attitudes and habits
you have consciously imbibed from the people in your life. Also
remember that you are doing this exercise only so that you can become
a better and more caring human being. And what you need to remember
at all times is that the divine spirit is there to guide, judge
and deliver justice. There is no need for you to comment, criticize
or condemn anyone.
Your circle of friends
You may be surprised how often and how you may have unconsciously
picked up certain habits, styles of speaking or certain food preferences
from your colleagues at the workplace.
Observe your friends carefully. Try to understand and evaluate whether
they are happily married, happily engaged or still looking out.
Try and understand what marriage means to them.
Try out some practical exercises, like inviting your friends for
dinner or lunch or a get together with their fiancées, girlfriends
and spouses. Observe everything, but make sure that you don't look
as if you are having your eyeballs peeled out or walking around
with a little notebook in your hands. Be discreet.
You could play some mentally stimulating games that can help your
friends too! From that, you will be able to gauge their levels of
intimacy and how well they know one another. And of course, their
attitudes about marriage.
Your colleagues in the office
Keep a vigilant eye over your colleagues in the office. You will
be amazed at the revelations that may come by, simply by having
a careful and sharp sense of observation. At all times, you must
not lose sight of your main objective in undertaking this exercise.
And that is not to pry into their personal lives, but rather to
use their experiences as a learning board.
By being an eyewitness to live and kicking romances (which every
office environment has one good example of) and failed relationships,
you can get a gut feel for the magic and the work that remains to
be done or undone in a relationship, as the case may be.
The people with whom you stay
Your parents
Home is where not just charity, but everything else begins. Home
is the starting point for the shaping up of your attitudes and many,
many of the complex patterns of thinking that you may have evolved
to justify some of your irrational ideas, prejudices or actions.
Try to observe as an outsider. Try to see the kind of skills they
have and the manner in which they have coped with life's challenges.
Every now and then, put yourself in their shoes and see if you could
have done a better job. You will be amazed how often you will find
yourself saying, ‘Gosh! With so little resources, they got
so far!’ And in self criticism you may reproach yourself saying
that if they have gone a mile, you wouldn't be able to travel even
a quarter of that distance, even though times have changed. And
life should be a lot more easier.
Amazing isn't it? Getting basics like relationships working right
first time round seems to appear like one of life's fundamental
problems.
Your grandparents
Move the time frame 50 years down the time line and you will see
vignettes of your grandparents in black and white. Shadowy figures,
which just deceptively appeared to come from a different world.
Yet, they too suffered the same insecurities that you do, and somehow,
came shining through, without counsellors, with only one another
and of course the entire family to hold on to, for support.
Your brothers, sisters, cousins and other relatives
Look right! Look left! You may see your brothers, sisters, cousins
and other relatives closer to your age, moving through the flush
of a first romance to more mature relationships. As you watch them
nestled in their lives in different stages of a journey made towards
achieving perfect rapport with their spouses, you may slowly begin
to form a mental picture of how you would like your life with your
marriage partner to be.
Your role model
This figure perhaps has changed over the years - from your teenage
years right down to the young man / woman that you are now. Even
as your role models have changed, try to appreciate the differences
and similarities in the people whom you have chosen to inspire from.
Your mentor
The person who has always been there to guide you, lend you a shoulder
to lean and really be there through all your troubled times. Has
it never occurred to you to look up to your mentor as a human being
with a love life? If so, take some time off to slowly and carefully
analyse the choice your mentor has made in his life partner, the
distinct ways in which your mentor and his or her spouse communicate
with each other. Try to look at the qualities each one values in
the other and most of all try to understand their views on marriage.
Conclusion
Remember, to have a successful marriage, you need to have some of
the very same qualities and skills that are required in doing any
task successfully. Commitment, patience, perseverance and of course
a great deal of understanding come as camouflaged ingredients in
all those who have a wonderful, thriving relationship. However,
the starting point for any great relationship would be the people
involved. Having to compromise in a relationship can mean a very
sad story and sometimes an unhappy ending to a relationship too.
As an emotionally mature adult, you
need to make sure that you are with the right person, as much
you need to be the right person for your potential soulmate. This
can be an incredibly complex problem if you have no means of checking
out your partner's habits, attitudes, likes and dislikes in a
very anonymous way. For example, in most arranged marriages, potential
partners know almost nothing about one another. These hidden problems
only surface after it's too late, i.e. after they get married.
Which is why using tools like the IMAGEngine
Summaries one can make a more correct decision regarding
the choice of one's life partner. (The emphasis is to marry the
BEST PERSON FOR YOU and not the BEST ONE AVAILABLE!)
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