How relationships can elevate and liberate us and how the same relationships may burden and bind us
Transcript
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or comments all of us are essentially relational beings we all as human beings want relationships and through the relationships essentially the strength of the relationship is the bond that we form through it and when we form the bonds the bonds can lead sometimes to entanglement they can lead to bondage but the bonds can also elevate and liberate I was two months in America before I came to Australia and one thing that consistently I had read about it I had heard about it but now I am observing this there is tremendous anxiety among people I gave a seminar in Ohio Ohio State University about facing our fears so there I quoted about what are the common fears of people I was doing some history so in the 18th century, 19th century 20th century, 21st century what are the fears that people have had so in the 21st century there are two fears which have got added or new have come to the top 10 list of fears one is the fear of terrorists and the second is the fear of rejection that when people form relationships I may offer myself I may try to connect myself what if the other person rejects me especially in youth when people are trying to explore the world of relationships it’s a crushing fear for many people so when we are trying to explore the world of relationships there is we all need to form bonds but in that when rejection comes that can be devastating actually in any relationship we try to form we get we define ourselves in terms of our relationships when we are born we are defined as the son of so and so or the daughter of so and so as we grow up we form different relationships I am the husband of so and so, I am the wife of so and so we define ourselves in terms of broadly two things our roles and our relationships our roles may be I am a teacher I am a software engineer I am a lawyer, I am a doctor so our roles define us and our relationships define us now among these two both are important but even in our roles we form relationships and when we form these different relationships some relationships can elevate us where they inspire us to rise upwards, to become better so children their parents encourage them children may not themselves want to study but the parents encourage them sometimes pressure them a little bit they study and then they eventually use their talents, develop and they have a good career in future so relationships can help us to improve and become better but at the same time relationships can also burden us if the parents have too much expectation and the children feel burdened by the expectations that can be counterproductive so once there a husband and a wife had a cold battle and their battle was the husband wanted what should our son do the husband wanted the son to become an engineer the wife wanted the son to become a doctor and the judge said why do you have to come to court just ask your son he says we can’t do that why not, son is not yet born sometimes our expectations may just become unrealistic so then in that case expectations can actually encourage people to rise up but expectations can also burden us