What is Relationship
What is Relationships
When I was in school, one of my friends had a father who was a very wealthy business tycoon. After my friend turned 18, his father took him to a bank and asked the bank officers to open an account for him.
One day, I needed some money, and my friend somehow knew that my poor parents couldn’t easily come up with that amount. To help me, he went to the bank and asked the banker for money, saying that he had a bank account there.
The banker told him, “You have a bank account, but you don’t have any money in it, so you cannot withdraw.”
He responded, “My father is rich, and he has a lot of money. I have a bank account. What’s the problem? Why can’t you give me the money?”
The banker explained, “Just because your father is rich and you have an account here doesn’t mean you can withdraw money. You need to have money in your account, and you cannot withdraw more than what you have!”
When we are born, countless relationships are instantly formed. Relationships with those who came before us—some as brothers, some as sisters, some as uncles, some as aunts, and some as cousins. But the first relationship is with our mother.
Our mother opens our account in this world, and with this, the relationship is established. However, to withdraw from these relationship accounts, we need to make deposits. To deposit, we need to earn or possess something.
At birth, time and energy are given to us. Using these as currency, we earn money, love, and the trust of people. When we spend time and energy with someone, we deposit love and trust in that relationship. Only then can we withdraw from that account.
Just because someone is my father, brother, sister, or cousin, it is not enough to withdraw from the relationship account. One of the reasons we feel hurt is when we believe our own relatives have abandoned us during difficult times. We expect our relatives to help us. If someone is compassionate or has some past-life connection, that person might help without us even understanding why. Others won’t.
We hurt others in relationships and sometimes take the account into a negative balance. There are some who hurt others without any reason. But there are enough times in life when we feel hurt because someone didn’t behave as we expected or didn’t do what we wanted.
You may have experienced times when you needed help, and suddenly, someone appeared out of nowhere, helped you, and then disappeared, never to be seen again.
You may also have experienced times when everything was going well in your life, but then someone came out of the blue, and something tragic happened, and you never saw that person again.
You might be walking in a market when someone approaches from the opposite direction. You’re certain you don’t know this person, but you feel an inexplicable pull toward them.
Sometimes, a completely new and unknown person coming from the opposite direction creates a feeling of intense discomfort within you. If you analyze deeply, you may find that these feelings are not due to any law of association with good or bad people or events in life. They are the relationships of your previous life.
Sometimes, you spend just a few hours with someone on a train, plane, or bus, and that creates a strong relationship. Other times, you spend your whole life with someone and feel nothing for that person.
O Chaitanya, what is a relationship? When does it start? How does it sustain? How does it break? How does it fade? These are strange phenomena of human life. Generally, we think a relationship means that someone is our brother, sister, cousin, parent, uncle, or aunt, and they should behave with us according to that relationship. But they will only behave with you according to the deposits of time and earned trust—either from this life or a previous life.
Hari Om Tat Sat Yours Truly Hari