If you want
to come to a home at the end of each day, in your family, never mince words.
The idea of a family
as a warm, fuzzy place, a.k.a home, often times clouds our thinking when it
comes to having honest conversations. In our endeavour to be nice to our kin,
we end up being fake. Resultantly, the basic premise on which the institution
of the family is founded suffers.
A family is a group
of people. So are those whom you find on the street. So what distinguishes a
family from a street crowd? A family is where you must ideally have people who
are willing to be available to support each other. A family is where people
will not, again ideally, judge each other. A family is where, ideally, you can
speak your mind. But most families have stopped being supportive or are as
fractious as any other ordinary group of people. Why? Simply because people in
such families have stopped being honest. A ‘loving’ family is somehow (mis)understood
by people as a place where people are ‘nice’ to each other. True love is not
about being nice alone – it is about being caring, compassionate and candid.
The compostion of a
family is really as plain vanilla as any group of inviduals. The word
individual means ‘single’ or ‘separate’. Now, how can we expect these ‘separate’
people to come together and bond? Surely a blood relationship cannot help just
because it is a common denominator that binds or connects all those who are
separate. Bonding really happens when people understand each other. And
understanding thrives only in an honest environment.
Building and
sustaining that honest environment is everyone’s responsibility. A great family
is one where everyone can speak their mind and be sure that they will be
understood and not interpreted. Nurturing this spirit of being there for each
other and belonging is a continuous process. There can be no room for
pretention here. People must have the freedom to choose what they want to do,
and do it the way they want to do it, yet, at the same time, they must be
responsible enough to revisit their choices, making adjustments and
alterations, should the family’s needs require them to do so.
If you want to build
a great family, make sure the first brick you lay is that of ‘honesty’.
Encourage open sharing, empower people to make mistakes, champion being there
for each other and expunge the phrase ‘I-told-you-so’. We all set out to build
careers and bank balances. Most often we get both right! If we spent a fraction
of that time on building our families right, we will find greater peace within
us and in our personal space. At the end of the
day, that’s what matters – are you going back to your house or are you coming
home!?
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