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Cognitions: The InnerSight Blog

Love and Bangalore Traffic

31/1/2019

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What would you say if I told you being stuck in Bangalore traffic can teach you a thing or two about love and relationships? You might find that ridiculous, but let me take just one aspect today and you might see what I mean.
 
Imagine you are driving quietly along the few two-way tree-lined avenues left in the city. It is a breezy, balmy 26 degrees, and you are in a place of general wellness and happiness. You drive along at an easy pace, enjoyable pace, happy that you are in Bangalore and not sweating it out in one of our huge coastal cities or in the smog up in the North, and all is well in the world. Suddenly, you start hearing a series of beeps, and that rises to insistent honks and a vehicle behind you is wanting to go ahead. There is enough space for them to overtake you and go on without making all that noise, but they do that anyway. You wave them ahead, and they honk as if it is going out of style soon, blaring as they pass you by.
 
What do you do? Do you just leave them be, or do you want to show them they can’t do that? Do you try and overtake them now, and blare your horn at them to show them what it feels to be at the receiving end of that behaviour? Or better still, do you overtake them and do it smoothly and quietly, setting an example on how they could have done what they needed without really impacting anyone else?
 
Think about it like this: You are sitting in your balcony, enjoying the view with your cup of tea and the newspaper, feeling all cozy and comfortable, and you start hearing a few beeps and honks from your loved one. You let it be and suddenly there is a lot of blaring. Perhaps they come and sit in the other chair and maybe even grab the newspaper out of your hand. What do you do? Do you quietly take out your phone and read something else? Or do you get angry and shout at them for being such bullies? Or do you, in quite the saintly fashion, ask them perhaps they would like your tea as well, or maybe a fresh cup?
 
Sounds familiar?
 
The choices you have in both the situations are really not that different. There is so much traffic in our lives, both in the physical sense and in a more metaphorical sense, in our relationships. Sometimes, we get the unexpected honker, the surprise anger outburst for no known fault of ours. We don’t know what was happening to them – maybe they had an emergency, something urgent they needed, or just pent up emotions. Were they just being a horrible person at that time? Maybe – but if we assume that horribleness always, we may just end up being horrible ourselves.
 
Like with traffic, perhaps it helps in relationships as well to go with the most benign attribution.

As written for and published in the New Indian Express.

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Love's infectious emotions

26/1/2019

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Infections spread easily. Being in a relationship means so much greater vulnerability for infections to spread especially if there is proximity to each other like where a couple is living together, travelling together or just physically being with each other for extended periods of time. Sometimes, couples take turns falling ill – first one gets the flu or the eye infection, and in a few days the other gets it, or both get it together. One could try and take all the hygienic precautions and escape being infected, and be in a position to care for the one who first falls ill, but it is not easy if you are in close physical proximity.

On the other hand, there are other types of infectious possibilities even when a couple is not physically close with each other. I am not talking of conjunctivitis, viral fevers or other myriad illnesses – I am talking of emotional contagion. Emotions are infectious. We are quite susceptible to our partner’s emotional state, and they to ours. It doesn’t need physical proximity. Sometimes, longer the distance, greater the emotional contagion.

A couple living thousands of kilometers from each other can pick up on each other’s sadness and start feeling the same, exhibit the same signs, get teary, distressed and disinterested in their immediate environment. When you are deeply connected, one person’s sadness can trigger an almost equal and similar emotion in the other, or even something deeper and more intense. Knowing a loved one is struggling with grief for instance, can make you even sadder than they may be, just because it is compounded with your own helpless feelings of not being able to be there with them. You might get a serious case of the blues through that.

Emotions are infectious, but may not always be the same – it often mutates. It is like someone near you has chicken pox, and that triggers jaundice in you. The triggered emotion may resonate in the same emotional space, like with the sad, concerned feelings, but quite often could be something very different.
If your loved one is really angry and shares that with you, you might get angry with them, but sometimes, you might actually get angry at them for getting into such situations. You might end up fighting with each other about it. Happy emotions might trigger sorrow, actually. Imagine a loved one calling you from the US, sharing with you how they had an amazing success, and that their project won some big prize – you may get happy for them, but you might also get really sad that you are not with each other, that you are missing out on celebrating it together. Similarly, your fear might trigger your beloved’s anxiety, and your jealousy might trigger righteousness.
The cure for emotional infectiousness is to balance with a more logical, thoughtful engagement, but then, the cure could actually be worse than the illness if overused, leading to emotional distance and a falling apart.
Just notice your own emotions. See if you can hold a bit of distance, and that should be safe enough.
As written for published in The New Indian Express
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Love in the time of the flu

24/1/2019

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It is the flu season. At doctors’ clinics all around, there are people sniffling and coughing, looking bleary-eyed at each other and wondering what sort of flu it is. For most of us, the doctor would give us a quick look, and after deciding it is none of the scarier variants around these days (H1N1, KFD, Zika and what not,) declare it is a viral fever and send us back home to rest, telling us that there is nothing to do except keep ourselves well-hydrated, take a paracetamol for the fever and wait it out.

There is probably no other time that one is grateful for relationships than when one is unwell. The idea of rest and relaxation at home and being taken care of is so therapeutic for the patient, but what does it do to one’s relationship?

When you are sick and need to rest, what kind of patient are you? Do you get needy and clingy, and ask for your hand to be held? Do you get possessive about the TV and demand that only your choice matters because you are sick? Do you meekly go away into the bedroom, bemoaning how your illness is taking a toll on everyone? Or, do you act as if nothing is the matter at all and that life needs to go on – do you try and continue to work, getting angry with the people around when they try to get you to rest? Are you the disobedient patient who will try and sneak in the ice-cream or something else that is against doctor’s orders?

If we are being honest with ourselves, we will likely confess that we are not exactly the model patient. Some of us seek extra love, and others seek to test the love available. A few try and distance themselves from loving attention, while yet others make their illness a matter of public record. We might regress to being childish, talking in baby-tongues and sulking or crying, and ask to be cajoled and pampered like parents would. We might act like a martyr and be self-sacrificing, but still, do a bit of drama around it.

How we behave if there is something major is often quite different – there is a far greater degree of concern and worry, and everything is different, but when we fully expect to get better in a few days, it is as if we give ourselves permission to almost enjoy this aspect of being able to love each other as a parent-child as well. We act less like the adults in a relationship and take on a distinctly more parent-child kind of relationship. The nurturing required becomes more like a baby and a caregiver than two adults.

Just like with a parent-child relationship, being able to get the care we need from a partner influences how deeply we bond with each other. The flu can be an annoyance, but it tests relationships and can also help deepen the bond.

As written for and published by The New Indian Express
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Best of times, Worst of times

2/1/2019

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Tired of New Year Resolutions?
 
Here is a game you might want to consider playing with your partner, provided you have in some way, form or shape been together for significant periods ot the year so quickly passing by. It is quite a simple game that we call “The Best of Times, The Worst of Times.”
 
Each of you take a couple of sheets of paper. If you want to be dramatic, take a sheet of white paper and write in blue ink for the best of times, and take a sheet of yellow paper and write in red for the worst – twist it about as you please, but the requirements are quite simple. You each write a letter to the other about your best time that year and the worst time. There are no pre-conditions, and no constraints on what it is that you need to write. Put the letters in an envelope, and give it to each other to be opened in your new year.  You could make a ceremony of it, open it together, open it separately – whatever suits you, but take some time to think over it, and see what happens for the two of you.
 
There are a number of possibilities.
 
Either the best or the worst, or both could have you featuring prominently in it, or not at all. You might have known about it or maybe it was something that never registered for you and yet you see it means so much for your partner. It could be something you considered trivial at the time it happened (“Your mother made me rotis, knowing very well that I prefer rice. I suffered for the whole week, and nobody even noticed”  - for example) or something major that happened you think ought to have been noticed, but was not (“I broke my back and was bed-ridden for a month!” – for example)
 
The point of it is to notice what happens to you both as you share what is written. Do you find yourself empathizing with the other’s experience and feeling a warmth for them, or do you find yourself looking for you in your partner’s letter? In other words, is it about you or is it about your partner?
 
In relationships, we want to ideally be able to love our partner as they experience themselves, and share what their life is like, but in reality, we are rarely able to achieve that ideal. Most times, we are looking for simpler gratifications. We want our best times to be about each other and worst times about some body else, but where we played a supporting role (“I lost my best friend, and only having you with me helped,”) and we might hate it if the worst times was squarely about us and best times didn’t feature us at all.  And that’s what makes this exercise quite powerful.
 
It can be a simple sharing, but could also be deeply insightful in terms of how you love.
 
In love, it truly is the best of times and the worst of times.

As written for and published by the New Indian Express

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