Family harmony: Key to happiness
Without family harmony, one cannot be genuinely happy in life, cannot be successful and cannot live a life that is worth living. Complete family harmony is the key to happiness, prosperity and success.
Family harmony means that there is an atmosphere of absolute peace, relaxation, unconditional love, fearlessness, understanding (and not misunderstanding), freedom of expression and longing for each other within the family.
Although the responsibility for creating such harmony lies on every member of the family, but the initiative is expected from the elder members of the family. And in case they fail to take this initiative, the responsibility falls on the younger generation.
It is imperative that parents should be more like friends to their children rather than always being parents. They should neither talk negative of their children nor abuse nor hurt their feelings, as the depressed feelings would often impede the progress of children. Conversation between parents and children should not always be a teaching conversation but it should be a learning conversation too.
Daughters are to be taken care of with more love, affection and maturity. They are more emotional and fragile in nature in comparison to the male child and are generally expected to live with their husbands separately after marriage. It is said that a son is a son till he gets a wife but a daughter always remains a daughter throughout her life.
These six points (A, B,C, D, E, F) formula can work wonders for a complete family harmony:
A for acceptance: Accept every family member as they are without any complaint or comparison. Every soul who comes to a family comes with a distinct attitude, behaviour, knowledge, karma and experience based on his/her previous birth and thus has a distinct thinking, attitude, behaviour, etc. Any comparison with another soul is neither appropriate nor desirable.
B for be a child and not a grown up: A child is always in an egoless state, is happy without any reason, forgets quarrels and becomes friends in no time, does not carry any impressions (good or bad) in his mind and is always in a playful and relaxed state of mind.
C for conflict avoidance: Every family member should try to avoid conflicts, frictions and quarrels among themselves. A winner in quarrel or argument is actually a loser because even if one wins an argument, one loses the harmony of relationship.
D for dil (heart) and not dimaag (mind): Heart is always in a mode of compassion, love and giving but head is full of jealousy, hatred, ego, revenge, etc., so never allow your head to rule over your heart.
The difference between heart and head is that the heart will say “let me apologise”, but the head will say “let them apologise first”.
E for expect less: Expectation is the major cause for anger, irritation, frustration, disappointment and depression. Reduce expectations from family members and be happy all the time.
F for forget and forgive: Every member should develop the habit of forgetting past quarrels, seeking forgiveness and forgiving others (irrespective of who was right and who was wrong). Carrying the dead load of past incidents without forgiving, takes away the happiness of your present. The writer is a modern age spiritual guru and the force behind Poorna Ananda, a Hyderabad-based centre for spiritual evolution and joyful living. He can be contacted at www.poornaan anda.org