Building ‘Balanced’ Relationships

Building ‘Balanced’ Relationships

Winter holidays are about to begin. Everyone will get in the festive mood and start enjoying the festivities. But can anyone enjoy festivals alone? Obviously not!

Everyone wants to reap moments of happiness with friends and family members. And for that, maintaining a cordial relationship with them is needed. When you really adore people around you the happiness increases manifold.

Further, everyone knows that a balanced diet is key to the healthy functioning of the body. Similarly, a balanced relationship is extremely important for people’s mental, emotional as well as physical well-being. It also helps in maintaining harmony & love in relationships.

Yet, how to achieve this balance?

Practice ‘Acceptance’

When people talk about relationships, initially, it’s all about seeking happiness from it. You need to understand that at times the same people may cause some ‘pain’ in your life also. However, you have to keep your relationship balanced in such situations as well and then only it will become a fruitful relationship.

Building such a relationship is not that difficult if you have patience, you care for the fellow person, and you practice the virtue of Acceptance.

For example- when people are madly in love with someone, they yearn for the same man or woman; it seems as if it’s impossible to live without them.  It’s a situation of deep attachment and insanity, to some extent. The attraction is so strong that it’s impossible to think about the end of the relationship.

But when the behaviour of the same person changes a little or if a fight breaks out then detachment and repulsion happen automatically.

Here, you are feeling love for the same person and also repulsion for the same person. But why does this happen?

The Impact of Duality

It happens, because life is all about duality; it’s bipolar. Summer-winter, happiness-grief, success-failure, these are parts of life.  So, you hang between attachment and detachment- both are opposite poles, between which life revolves. We spend our entire life, staying entrapped in this duality.

Either you are in a state of happiness or distressed, but it’s almost impossible to get available to the state of equanimity.

The Middle Path is the Solution

In the Bhagavad Gita, Lord Krishna says, get detached and be established at the middle point.  Lord Buddha has called this divine situation, ‘the Middle Path’. It means, do not chase anything madly. Do not hate or love anything in extremes, rather get established midway and stabilize your soul.

Otherwise, one may go insane and becomes neurotic if trapped in such extremities. With a desire for a big mansion, one may spend sleepless nights. But as soon as he acquires this dream mansion, and starts living in it, he gets envious of someone else’s bigger properties.

Now he feels detachment from the old house and a desire for a bigger better home emerges within. Here, ego is at work. We want to keep our ego at a higher level.

A person who is attached will also be detached, but no one walks the middle path. You have to maintain the balance of mind, in all circumstances, which is the sign of Yog.  And the one who is balanced is a Yogi or Yog-Yukt.

Thus, in relationships, be like a Yogi, control your ego and choose the middle path. It will help you in bringing more love, peace and harmony to your relationships, giving you beautiful moments of happiness in life.

Dr Archika Didi

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