This letter is to all those kids who might have missed the most important lesson of their life at an young age when they were about turn into teenagers.
Hopefully, I do not get lost to turn the well-meaning words intended to educate or inform into a rant that you may dismiss it as coming from a person who has no idea of what you are going through. May be you may change that perspective when you finish reading my letter. Please do not misconstrue the caring advice that you receive as pushing you in the direction you may not want to go, rather look at it from the perspective I am going to present here. It is a 101 on family, partnerships and mutual trust.
First and foremost thing I do whenever I am interacting with kids who are eager to learn and full of curiosity is to trust that it is easy to go about finding a win-win situation. If it sounds like I am having it my way or you are having it your way, we can’t find a win-win. You may not realize that, if one has spent hours reflecting and contemplating on things to share the same with the people they love, there must be some value in it. In reality it is fine if you want to look at them as individual situations to resolve them in some manner. But within a family they are not individual situations. They are all connected and defined by the partnerships that are much bigger than the individual situations.
Family as a unit exists on the notion of a partnership. This may sound bit new to you. But be patient. The meaning, the responsibility and the accountability of such partnerships, that family enters into, will not be strong solely based on finding win-win situations all the time. It does mean that we can start with a win-win in mind. We lose, we fall, we stumble, and we gain depending on the situation. The final outcome while working through these situations, are very specific to the family, and, the tradition and the culture that it follows. The means to achieve becomes as important as the goals to achieve – individually or collectively.
The partnerships within a family can get murkier as learning takes places from all directions. But as long as the basic notion of partnership remains strong, the family as a union can thrive and contribute on a much larger scale. If you believe that the team has more strength than the strength of its individual members, you will understand that families are special teams capable of making a substantial difference in the lives of the people they touch, they interact and connect with. I am fortunate to have come from such a family. I have learnt from it and I do not want to let you down now to regret later that I did nothing when I should have or could have.
Let us have our individual differences. Let the strength of our individual characters strengthen us, not weaken us. Work from that perspective. You will recognize the family as a team, and, that each one of us will have room to learn and will grow to learn to deal with all kinds of situations – possible as long as we do not lose sight of the family as a unit.
It is easier to get confused with independence, having a space for yourself, being in control when it may mean more of a life-style change that you may be seeking. All these things will haunt you all over again once the new life-style wears out and brings with it, its own set of issues forcing you to look for another life-style change. Well, everyone is welcome to make life-style changes, but wait, do not misconstrue them to render the outcomes you desire or that you are seeking useless. Making life-style changes does not define you; making most of the life-style you have to give a new meaning to the partnerships that define these life-styles will and with it you will help yourself to discover new life-styles and soon you will be comfortable in your own skin.
Every time I have felt like making a life-style change, I was successful to suppress the urge to act as lone-ranger and instead, learn to find the new meaning within the partnership to add value to it by working with others. When you view life as a journey riddled with obstacles, think that the progress you are making is letting you see more of them; if you happen to view life as meaningless, think that meaning you found today is the state of mind that you have let yourself in and you are equally capable of letting yourself out; if you think you are not being in control of your life, think that the life is not there to control either by you or anyone, but be aware that you are being palmed off from one controlling system to the other and in the long run, none of the systems are better than the others unless you and the system develop a mutual trust.
The art to develop the mutual trust comes from the downsized system that exists close to you – family. The matured and learned members of the family would have faced the brunt of those systems to be in a position to teach, share and let you grow to learn and develop such a mutual trust by recognizing the diversity of the systems that you are beginning to interact with – bigger systems like organizations, special interest teams and the communities you become part of, to name a few. Without an appropriate mutual trust, these systems are capable of annihilating their member individuals no matter how strong individuals are physically or mentally, how rich they are, how knowledgeable they are, or, how famous they are. One cracked trust, they are out. Think of any system as an example. Each and every one of them is littered with classic examples of such cracked trusts causing terrible downfalls.
Hope this 101 on family, partnerships and mutual trust concepts puts you all ahead and in sync for the 21st century.