"FRIENDSHIP and LOVE -Kaun khet ki muli?"

Tarush and Manaal met through a dating site, attracted to each other and fell in love.

One fine morning when they were discussing about their future with their dreamy eyes, they raised this evergreen argument of Love and friendship. Which gives more sustainability to a relationship? Why married couple bored after few years? We all know best friend can be the life partner but what if a life partner in your best friend!! Is it possible once if you reach the higher level of feelings can you break it and return to friend zone?

So many questions right!! I am sure there are hundred and thousand questions can be raised on friendship vs love.

 Let’s try to answer few of these questions and help the couple. Well I am not a master on this but definitely, my blog viewers are. I am sure they also can help them to find the right cord of successful relationship.

Amen!

Ok lets start with the differences

Friendship is not a state of mind is an act. It is something you do; it is not whether you are good or not, this is not a reflection of you, this is a balanced relationship between people. It varies from person to person.

Friendship and love are not quite the same.

Well start from the beginning when we think about friendship and Love what are the situations and common believes come in our mind, where are the basic differences we see from our experiences.

Friendship: You can curse each other. The more you curse, the closer friends you are. If you complement each other too often, you know that you are not close friends.
Love: You have to complement each other all the time. The more you complement the closer lovers you are. If you fight too often, you know your love is not strong.

Friendship: You can tell each other all the criticism and how fat/ugly/loser the friend looks without any fear. In fact, your best friend will always tell you what is wrong with you - mostly in most hurtful words and then laugh at you!
Love: You have to suppress any criticism that comes to your mind about your partner. If you want to convey criticism, you have to thread your words very carefully and ensure that somehow that criticism is perceived as a complement. If you choose, harsh words then be ready to pack your bags!

Friendship: You can kick your friend in the bed at 3am and ask him/her to make you a cup of tea/coffee. You'll get a kick and some abuses in return - with a steaming cup of tea/coffee (Aww that’s cute).
Love: If you want tea/coffee at 3am, get your ass out of the bed, be careful to not make any noise, make the tea/coffee and sip it in silence when s/he snores in peace.

Friendship: You can stare at hot chicks as much as you want or dream together about hot guys.
Love: You have to steal glances in the middle of conversation with your partner if you want to stare at that hot chick or check out that dude.

Friendship:  You are not expected to bath daily or smell good. You get to watch TV the whole time in your boxers. You are encouraged to cement your ass in your comfort-zone.
Love:  Shave. Shower. Comb. Perfume (good one). Talk to her (which means listen and nod and agree - repeat). If you're a girl then wax, thread, mani/padi, look good, dress up (but not provocative).

Friendship: Explore your weird side. Be wild. Encourage monkey behaviour. Help your friends when they want to go nuts. Find ways to go nuts. Strive to be different. Make memories of a lifetime.
Love: Suppress your weird side. Snub the wild. Judge others' monkey behaviour (even if you're secretly longing for it). Pattern-ize your life. Fit in the grid. Have a predictable life. Hangout with other couples. Get bored.

Friendship: Physical intimacy screws up friendship.
Love: Only good physical intimacy saves a relationship from sinking too soon.

 

Well! Well! Well

Wait a sec; I am not going to conclude here with the decision that friendship over the love is best. Because both has its own pros and cons.

Okay why I wrote these differences? because there is a very thick line between friendship and love, sometime we notice maximum time we ignore and very uncommonly we admit.  

A great person I know once wrote on the difference between friendship and love. This is what he had to say.

“Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.”

The same person also said this about friendship:

“Friendship arises out of mere Companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste, which the others do not share and which, until that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one."

It is when two such persons discover one another, when, whether with immense difficulties and semi-articulate fumbling or with what would seem to us amazing and elliptical speed, they share their vision - it is then that Friendship is born. In addition, instantly they stand together in an immense solitude.”

However, my question is... Why should one have to choose between love and friendship? Why can't we enjoy both?

This heart is a zigzag maze - of people, of relationships, of feelings, of memories.

So why should you be content with cherry picking just a few pieces of it?

Love is definitely more complicated and harder to handle. So why love is required, if there are best friend, good pals in your life? Well there is no particular logic behind this, you cant wear a signboard in your mind with love is prohibited written in it.

Love is a lot like life, sometimes. It is a journey of different experiences. It can be difficult to handle , it will get on your nerves , it will test your patience to the limit , it will excite you to no bounds - the surge that you feel in your emotions when you think you've seen that one special person or when you're anticipating even a simple text / hi from them… and the crashing nosedive your emotions go through when you've found that the text was from someone else , that the person you saw was someone else. These things have to be seen/experienced to believe.

You tell me…

a) Have you ever felt Goosebumps when you see your friends or their text messages?

b) Have you really tried as hard to fight for your friendship or protected it from a fallout the way you would have for your love?

c) Have you really tried to put yourself on the line for friendship?

d) Do you dress up for your love the way you would for an outing with friends? No? Why? Because you want to capture and hold your lover's attention onto you.

If the answer to any of the above questions is a yes then you are in love and it is not friendship anymore.

In marriage, LOVE is the prime ingredient. Love survives hard times and comforts during the sad times.

Friends come and go; oh, yes few friends are in elliptical move too.

 

Well! So, what is Love without friendship? But to answer the question I’d say yes, depending on your age.

Friendship and love are closely connected. The major difference is the physical aspect. When you are younger, the physical aspect of love is at a premium. But as we age it’s the friendship that means more.

A 65 year old might not want Don Juan but a close friend will fit the bill nicely.

I asked many happily married couples and after a few years the sex has been greatly reduced but the friendship has grown…. So in a sense their relationship has started moving from a romantic love to a platonic love (friendship).

 

But most of all, true friends are forgiving and more acceptable. The journey from a lover to a friend to a BFF is not too easy. Much more acceptability, adaptability and open mindedness, patience are required. And It comes gradually with the habit. When couple starts staying 24X7, after couple of years they become the habit of each other, and then only right cord of friendship will come with silent acceptability and forgiveness. 

Great friendship can't be made its developed by time. 😊  

"I Love her but I hate her too..."

You love her, you hate her. You fight you make up. And repeat it all over, again and again. 

Initially this could be thrilling and exciting as the making up were the intense, those days you flooded with strong emotions. But eventually, it will make you worry about the future of the relationship and it will bound to think if you have taken the right decision by entering into it. 

if you are wavering between loving and hating your partner, then you could be in a complicated love-hate relationship. Initially, you may think that love will eventually outrun the haltered, but when things get worse, you will find yourself on shaky ground with your partner. 

In this post I will try to discuss about actuality of love-hate relationship, and probably the reasons for it. Don't take it personally, but in today's world I can see lots of relationship knowingly or unknowingly struggling with the toxicity of love-hate relationship. Though I never though about this before even I don't have the solution for this, but here I will just try to identify the traits of it. 

What is a love hate relationship?

Ankush and Tushanki both were met from matrimonial site, though they were not their first preferences but consequences brought them into relationship. Few initial months it was like dream, they were roaming around the city , planning for future, having dinner together. weekend parties etc. etc. but what Ankush hid the reality from Tushanki was previously he was in a relationship and before he came out from that bad memories he just entered to another relationship with Tushanki just to forget or may be filling up the gap of past.

So one fine evening Tushanki explore it that still he is talking to his past, and that day the dream the love castle broke down between them. Trust is very very sensitive thing in the world once its broken nothing can fix it. Now from that day the toxicity of their relationship increased gradually. Tushanki tried to finish it in same day, but somehow she was stuck and drawn with the love of Ankush. That day the love-hate relationship born. 

A love hate relationship is one where both the partners have strong feelings for each other but are not consistent in expressing them. So they behave lovingly on some occasion and act like enemies on others. - Ankush and Tushanki also failed in this trap, they fought devastatingly just after the make out. they stopped respecting each other they use ample of abusive languages when they fight. but then when they are in love no one can say that they are fiercely enemy of each other, that time they even can speak through signs they can behave like they are soul mate. Strange right !!

couples in love hate relationship tend to speak harsh words that they actually do not mean. On same cases, they can't stand each other and might want to end the relationship but do not end it.

So inconsistency of their emotions is the first sign of love-hate relationship.

Fine !! now what are some other traits of love hate relationship 

Extreme emotions define love hate relationships. At times you will feel the luckiest person in the world because of certain appealing qualities in your partner. you may love that your partner is dynamic, focused in life, great company of travelling and a foodie, always helpful etc. etc. no matter how much you try, you will find certain qualities in your partner irresistible.

But then there are few traits that are an absolute turn off. It can be their ego, short temper, loud mouth , not a good listener or streaks to laziness. These habits or traits may not be a deal breaker but tend to cause friction now and then. At times like these, definitely you will feel that you made a mistake by committing to your partner.

But the problem is in this particular situation you love and hate each other with passion. when you both argue  it would be intense and can lead to any direction like threats of breaking up, cursing each others , cursing the birth of each other even if it persist it will lead to physical abusiveness too. because during such heated moment you may find each other highly repulsive. Even as you are thinking about calling it quits, you may have a change of heart and makeup, shower each other with love and forget that you were at each other’s throats just a while ago. But this love is also short-lived, as the cycle of breaking up and making up goes on.

So now what, you can ask me if this much toxicity in their life then why they are not separated and live happily ever after. But the things is human psychology don't work with proper logics. In our mind its not always 2+2 = 4.

Initially, you may have been attracted to the positivity in your partner (and still do). But when the negatives caught up, you were taken aback and wanted to end the relationship. However, the positives are too good to let go, or you have invested too much time and effort to walk away without trying one more time like Ankush and Tushanki, after 4 years of fight they are still together, somehow after every worst fight they get invisible magnetic force towards each other which they cant even ignore . So, like them you start maintaining the relationship as a prized possession, with the motive of winning them over. You may try to make them stay committed to you permanently or give in to your needs and desires. Like Ankush and Tushanki you see other normal couples going ahead in the relationship, supporting and understanding each other, but you are stuck in the vicious cycle of loving and hating and gain loving. With all the mixed emotions and roller coaster rides , you just cannot figure out what the future of the relationship is. After a long such relationship, maybe you got comfortable in that relationship like my friends ankush and tushanki or may be you are just afraid of being single thats why continue to being with them.

While you adore certain traits in your partner, you do not love them enough to accept their flaws. This prevents both of you from having an emotional connection, which is essential for the longevity of the relationship. You could be chasing perfection and trying to fit your partner into your mental image of the perfect guy or girl. Whenever they do something amazing, your heart fills with love for them. And the moment they go against your will, you start hating them. Your feelings for them become conditional and depend on how they make you feel.

 Lack of an emotional connection could lead to constant fights and conflicts. At one point, you would no longer discuss the issues and may start to sweep them under the rug. Lets say, you are angry at your partner for not doing the cooking or cleaning up the room or not even picked up clean cloths from washing machine. Instead of addressing that simple single issue, you use that to bring out all the previously unresolved issues. Such built-up anger will lead to hatred and resentment, which is like a ticking time bomb ready to explode at the slightest disturbance. And when it does, the lack of an appropriate emotional connection will make matters worse.

As mentioned earlier, there may be some things about your partner that you cannot stand. So, even if you feel incredibly drawn towards them, the aspects that you dislike in them nag you. This makes it difficult for you to love them or hate them completely. You may have tried to talk to your partner about the things that are bothering you, but there is no change, and eventually, you come to a conclusion that they will never change. This will leave you frustrated as you cannot decide whether to stay for the good things or leave for the bad things.

So, unable to carry the emotional baggage one day Ankush shared all these things to his friend. His answer was not satisfactory so he asked another friend. 

Now this sharing and taking suggestion from others complete the full circle 

and then he started to get reactions like 

"You're going over there again?"

"You're giving her another chance? what's wrong with you?"

"Why do you stay with her if you fight so much?" etc. etc.

When the people who love you and are able to see your situation from a distance start pointing out red flags, the truth is hard to deny. And yet you may try your best to do just that. Denying that the relationship isn't working or is even becoming toxic isolates you from those loved ones who may be able to help. Isolation is dangerous.  

Actually when you are not sure about your partner, and talking to them is taking you nowhere, you try to calm down the voices in your head by taking the relationship issues to your friends and family.

You may feel that may be you are judging the person in one way , may be they see things differently, or they might know how to fix your relationship. You will have an impulsive need to share your feelings with your friends for support and validation. You know it might hurt or anger your partner, but you cannot help as the doubts inside your head do not let you stay still.

And finally I must say that a healthy relationship is one where you can be yourself, love without boundaries, and accept each other without any reservations. But in a love-hate relationship, you are sometimes in and sometimes out. Such half-hearted emotions will make you protective of yourself. Fear of  rejection and being hurt, you try to play safe. You start building scenarios in your head as to how you can come out clean from the relationship. You try to focus more on the qualities which you hate and push your partner aside.

If any body could relate to most of the behavior i mentioned here then you could be in a love-hate relationship. and you may wonder how you and your partner landed in this situation? 

Frankly speaking Rome wasn't built in a day!! This situation is a result of many small things ..

1.       Ego: Ego and love cannot be together. If you and your partner have giant egos that are overshadowing your love, then you will have difficulty accepting your faults. And when your partner tries to point it out, you may take it negatively.

2.       Compatibility issues: Things can also go wrong when your views and expectations of love, life, goals, and dreams do not match.

3.       Unbent personalities: If both the partners have strong personal opinions and views and are not ready to let go of them or even bend them a little for the sake of being together, then the love can turn into hatred in no time.

4.       Control issues: Another downside of having a strong personality is the urge to control. If both you and your partner are always fighting over who holds the reins of the relationship, then there is only war and no love.

5.       Cheating, jealousy, and insecurity: Such negative traits also push a relationship into a love-hate cycle. If you encounter these issues and ignore them instead of addressing them, they could build up hate and resentment in you.

6.       Try to perfect others but not oneself: When you always find faults and want your partner to be perfect, but ignore your own flaws, you inevitably create a love-hate situation.

If God grace if you can identify the cause of all those intense but wavy emotions, you must work on fixing them before you fed up and the relationship moves towards breakup. 

Thanks for reading...I don't know about the future of Ankush and Tushanki but if someone can comment with proper solution then you are always welcome, I promise that your suggestion will be shared with them. 

      

Our Thinking Moves Through the Fourth Dimension: The Time

Nature never makes haste; her systems revolve at an even pace. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion, as though the short spring days were an eternity. All her operations seem separately, for the time, the single object for which all things tarry. Why, then, should man hasten as if anything less than eternity were allotted for the last deed? - Henry David Thoreau Nature is perfect example of the art of waiting. It takes the evolutionary impulse of Nature several thousand years to perfect the shape of a single flower. When we look at natural process, we realize that there is certain wisdom implicit in the paradox: faster is slower. How often do we act against the laws of Nature only to realize that we have to make a much greater effort to clean up our mess? In many cultures, patience is misunderstood as plain laziness. However, there is a conscious energy found in patience that provides an impulse towards right action at the right time. Nature demonstrates this day after day. Only human beings seem to have problems in managing time. No other species on earth apparently suffers from this problem, which is peculiar to our industrial civilization. The problem of time seems to have emerged with the invention of the clock. The clock is the ancestor of chronologic time. Although it serves a very useful purpose in standardizing time around the world, the clock creates a fictitious notion of time as an irreversible, uniform, and linear movement of energy. In Nature, time is never linear; it is cyclical. The laws of Nature clearly tell us that time is not irreversible. We see the reversal of time in our psychological universe in the form of the memory of past events. From the memory of physical Nature, seasons come back year after year, crops grow, the sun rises and sets and the planets go round and round in their orbits. All ancient civilizations considered time not as an impersonal chronologic mechanism measured by a clock, but rather as a living entity that is born, lives, and dies like a human being. In India, the word for time is kala, which also means death. In the ancient civilization of South America, there is evidence of the worship of time as a living force. There was a good time and a bad time, an auspicious time and an inauspicious time. The people lived in time as they lived in space, avoiding the pitfalls and setting foot on the right time as if it were firm ground. We had laughed away the superstitious beliefs of the ancients until Albert Einstein proved that time, like space, is a relative phenomenon. Because of Einstein, we have come to realize that time is not merely determined by the clock but is also manufactured by the consciousness. Einstein said, “Sit with your hand on a hot stove for a minute. It would seem like an hour”. This renewal of the perception of time as a relative phenomenon has taken us back to the wisdom of the ancients, who perceived time as a relative quality rather than an absolute quantity. In defiance of the modern perception of time as a chronologic journey, it may be said that time is not a one-way public route; it is also a private apartment. I am talking here about personal time. In the context of space, what we see depends on where we sit. In the context of time, our perspective on time influences how we process time in our consciousness. When our awareness has a chance to expand in time, as when we are in love, time moves at a dizzying speed. When our awareness is compressed in a certain time, as when we are doing an unpleasant task, time seems to stand still, like a burden on our backs. Apart from chronologic time, which is unidirectional, there is also biologic and psychological time, which in non-linear and multidimensional. Chronologic time emerged from the fragmentation of time into the past, the present, and the future. In this kind of time, the present is always referred to in terms of the past or the future. It is as if the present is non-existent. A look at the movement of the hands of a mechanical clock reveals that this movement is not smooth but jerky. The hands jump from the past to the future, bypassing the moment. This linear movement of chronologic time in fits and starts speeds up our psychological clock. As a result, we are never present in the moment, and are forever present in the fictitious past or in the imaginary future. This inability to live in the moment, in the here and now, divorces us from reality. We live in the conceptual time of the clock rather than in the real time in our biological and psychological universe. The stress syndrome that diffuses modern organizations stems from the fact that in response to external time pressures, our internal clocks run counter to our natural rhythms. The rhythms of our heartbeat, respiration, and hormonal secretions are upset by the mechanical rhythms of machines and work schedules. The relentless hands of the clock and the sense of vanishing time grip our awareness as we move towards our self-created deadlines. Living in chronologic time alone limits us to a closed system in which we conceptualize the irreversible flow of life along with the passage of time. This perception of scanning of the self along with time eats up our energy and produces in us a fear of time going by. This fear is not only unnerving but it also leads to a great leaking of psychological energy. The only way to reverse this tide of time is to live in the present, in the here and now. Nature teaches us to live in the here and now. The butterfly lives from moment to moment, yet has time enough. The dew drop sits for seconds on a blade of grass, yet it does not panic. The spring flower gently opens to receive summer’s inscriptions, and they never seem to be in a hurry. The busy bee never suffers from stress. All of Nature demonstrates to us the wonderful secret of managing time without being managed by it. Nature lives in a simultaneous world of time and timeless. All changes in the natural world belong to time. Behind the process of these changes is the principle of continuity, which is changeless and timeless. The process makes sense only in relation to the principle. The principle is the benchmark. Great men work on time but live in the world of timeless. Their lives serve as glorious links between their predecessors and the unborn generations of tomorrow. Gandhi described the timeless aspirations of a conscious man as follows: [While] everything around me is ever changing ever dying, there is underlying all that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, and recreates… For I can see that in the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. -Mohandas K. Gandhi

Who are you?

If we think deeply, I hope we all will agree on a same point that many of our problems are self created. The source of self-created problems is the fact that we mistake the self-image for our real self.

Self-image is nothing but the compiled projections of our identity. Self-image is a cluster of names and forms by which we differentiate ourselves from the rest of our environment. We have different self-images as a parent, as a spouse, or as a colleague. We perform various roles in various spheres of life. Each of these roles creates a certain impression of our self in our consciousness. Thus, one sees oneself as a liberal parent or as a task-oriented boss or as a considerate spouse. All these images of ourselves help us to stabilize our identities in our own eyes.

The problem occurs whenever we confront a reality not consistent with our self-image. For instance, when one receives information from outside world that one is an autocratic boss, or an “uncaring spouse”, or an “ugly fat slob”, one’s self-image is hurt. We attempt to defend our self-image by various means. We may become angry or indifferent to the outside reality. We may take negative feedback from others too seriously and feel dejected. We may also try to adapt something we imagine to be socially acceptable. All these methods may give us a temporary sense of relief, but they cannot equip us with the mirage that is our self-image.

Self-image makes us vulnerable to changes outside us. If our self-image is one of an evergreen youth, the appearance of the first grey hair makes us lose sleep. We are traumatized by the single rejection slip from an editor, if our self-image is that of a successful writer. Our self-image makes us vulnerable simply because much of this image is unreal. One’s self-image is a frozen model of our real selves. Just as a model is a symbol or attribute of reality and not the entire reality, one’s self-image is merely a projection of the real self. More often than not, this projection is a distortion of the real self, just as a shadow is a distortion of the real substance.

How does one go beyond the veil of self-image in search of the real self? The quest for the self can begin only when we have turned our attention from the world outside to the world inside. This is also a transformation in the quality of our seeing: from mere sight to insight. The journey towards self-realization involves the disciplines of silence and solitude. Silence frees us from the noise of our exterior consciousness and allows us to probe our inner voice. Solitude enables us to be intimate with ourselves. In deep silence and solitude we begin to glimpse the truth of our lives. We realize that whatever exists is an expression of existence and that our many ways of living are expressions of life itself. We also understand, as the Bhagavad Gita tells us, “The unreal has no being: the real never ceases to be. The final truth about them both has thus been perceived by the seers of ultimate reality” . A course in miracles echoes this truth is saying that which is real cannot be threatened and that which is unreal does not exist.

I have often asked some of my friends from all walk of my little life, “who are you?” I received predictable answers such as, “I am an engineer, or a marketing manager, or an ENT specialist”. The next question I asked is,” Who knows you are all of these?” this time the answers revolve around ‘mind’ or ‘thought’. Then I proceed to ask the final question, “Who knows you have a mind?” this time a silence descends on my friends. In that silence we begin to look the truth of our selves, which is beyond all names and forms.

Sleeping Beauty

We must have read the story of the princess, called the Sleeping Beauty. The sleeping princess came to life once again when the charming prince came along and provided the enchanted kiss.

I believe, there are sleeping beauties in all of us. We only need the kiss of enchantment to awaken those sleeping beauties. Man is good by nature, but to bring about that goodness into play, all we need is the proper stimulus. But the questions are how do we get it? And how do we provide it to others? Chandasoka, the cruel prince became the noblest ruler the world has ever known. He was called CHANDA because he was ruthless and cruel. It is said he killed all his brothers to gain his father’s throne. But, the horrible spectacle and experiences of the war of Kalinga stirred up the noble man in him. And so was born Ashoka the Great.

Abdul Qadir, the little boy from Persia, would not tell a lie and, therefore, he told the robbers that he had money sewn into his clothes. And what was the effect of this simple act of truthfulness? The robbers abandoned their wicked path and became good men. The example of Damon and Pythias, the friends who did not hesitate to bet one’s life for the other softened even a very cruel king into forgiving them. Not only that, the King gave up the path of cruelty after that incident. The great sense of justice of King Prahlad not only won him praise but also the life of his son Virochana when he decided a case in favour of another, even when his son’s life was at stake. General Washington’s small act of helping two young soldiers to lift and roll a log changed the whole outlook of the officers of his army.

These and the many things we read about the goodness of man and the finer points of human character are the enchanted kisses, the enchanted kisses that awaken the goodness which lies in us all.

It is not that anyone lacks goodness. Everyone has it, only one has to be made aware of it and the realization that by being good, what a fine person one can be.

It is said that man is the product of his environment. The way one behaves and acts may be the result of what one has seen and experienced in the surroundings that one lives in. but we cannot call a person a man of strong character if he adopts both the good and the evil. A person with a strong character resists what is evil and prompts what is good not only in himself, but in his surroundings, too. So while man may be said to be the product of his environment, he is also the maker of his environment. Now, shall we be just what our environment makes us or shall we be the ones who make our own surroundings? Shall we be the ones who need the enchanted kiss to awaken the goodness in us or shall we be the ones who provide that enchanted kiss to awaken the goodness that lies inside everyone around us?

That is for we have to decide, and to act accordingly.

Let us not judge the people by their acts, deeds and uttering. Let us think why a person or a people act and talk in a particular way or mood. How is it that a certain person is kind and considerate and another cruel and self-centered? Is it due to what he has absorbed from his surroundings or is it due to certain circumstances? It may be due to one or both. But as an anonymous poet wrote:-

“There is so much good in the worst of us,

And so much bad in the best of us,

That hardly becomes any of us

To talk about the rest of us.”

We can talk about others only when we have gathered more good in us and when we have made ourselves such as to be able to discern good from bad. Think of kindness in our way through life. We realize that many people lack kindness. As Julia Carney said in a poem Little Things:-

“Little drops of water, little grains of sand,

Make the mighty ocean and the pleasant land.

Little deeds of kindness, little words of love,

Help to make earth happy like the heaven above.”

It is no use telling people that they are cruel or unkind. It is by setting an example and doing kind deeds that make the other people realize what kindness is. If they can see in our acts what they themselves lack, they will certainly be aroused to that sense of kindness, compassion and love which they have so far been wanting, because they had not had the experience to arouse it. That is the magic kiss we can provide.

If we notice a mechanic at work, we can see that he does not rail at the engine or hammer away at it for not working properly. Instead, he set about locating the fault, or the source of it.

A little tightening here, a little screwing up there and some oiling here and there helps the engine burst into life again and the mechanic sings out in happiness. It is so with us too.

Finding faults with others is to make people into an enemy for if we tell them in their face what their faults are, they will immediately retort and may even say unkind words to us. Let us abide time and wait for an opportunity. As Prior said in his poem, “An English Padlock”:

“Be to her virtues very kind.

Be to her faults a little blind.”

Blind, of course, to an certain extent, but not totally blind. Note the faults but do not discredit the other for these. Instead, think and act pleasantly to abolish them.

Use praise, and use it lavishly, whatever you find that someone, even though he may not be a very good person, has done something good. For praise often opens the gates to goodness and once a person enters those gates, we can be sure that he is on the right path.

Failures, or the inability to attain what we describe for, often make many of us dejected and defeated in life that we give up all hope, and resign to fate. We tend to look at the worst aspect of things and take life as it comes. Such an attitude towards life will not take any of us anywhere. For such people, the magic touch is provided by a message of hope, by a message of faith in GOD and right action; for although one may lose hope; one should not cease to act. The story of Robert Bruce of Scotland is an example of what the action of even a small insect like a spider can do to one who loses hope. And as John Gay said,” While there is a life, there is a hope.” So what we should do is, to make the dejected ones, the ones who dwell in hopelessness, realize that there is still hope, provided they act, act in right earnest and in the right direction. But at the same time, we too have to realize that it is we who are to serve as the example.

Lack of hope is lack of ambition – the ambition to live, the ambition to live well, the ambition to rise, the ambition to do great things, the ambition to lessen the burden of others and so on. Read the biographies of great men and fire people’s imagination. Infuse in yourself and in others the ambition which we may lack. That would be the magic kiss for all.

Let us look around ourselves with an open mind. Let us provide the magic kiss, the enchanted kiss, to rouse the sleeping beauty in those around us as well as take that kiss from others to arouse the sleeping beauty in our own selves...