When should we stay silent and when should we be frank? Expressing ourselves is important, right? To clear misunderstandings and miscommunication. Relationships need talking, right? Only keeping everything inside the mind and not sharing clearly leads to more confusion, right? Or not.
Speaking and sharing are surely beautiful things and important ingredients of a relationship. But this sharing should generally be of a beautiful nature, for example of beautiful common experiences and thoughts and hopes and aspirations. What is best avoided are movements of the ego, especially strong differences of opinions. Discussing this does not help. It only triggers strong reactions, fights and quarrels. One must understand that there are no two people who think alike or feel the same way. What is important, however, is to have the same core values, and at least some common meeting grounds. The rest should be accepted as part of the variation of life in every creature. So sharing means sharing the beautiful common elements, focusing and expressing whatever is beautiful in the other person. This strengthens the goodness and lays the foundations of a strong and happy bonds. The rest of it should be left to each one to deal with. Of course, I am not speaking of common outer challenges in which one has to face together but about the difficulties of human nature. If at all one wants to speak of the difficult side of others, it should be with understanding and compassion, along with constructive suggestions to deal with it. Merely pointing out fingers only worsens things.
Affectionately,
Alok Da
