Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Illusions are necessary ingredients of healthy relationships. If we see the other person transparently as he/she is, it won’t be easy for us to love that person. A few months back, one of my sisters told Maggie (my wife) that I was a terror for my relatives when I was young. I was. Only, I didn’t know that. I used to think I was quite a hero in those days. That was my illusion about myself. Eventually I lost that illusion and grappled with my own terrifying reality. I became a terror to myself during that period of self-discovery. I realised how jejune I had been. I vowed to improve myself. I did improve too because my efforts were genuine and concerted. But this self-improvement distanced me from people. I chose the distance myself. I didn’t want to hurt others anymore. I didn’t want to be hurt either. I became a quasi-recluse. Why did my sister have to remind me about that bad past through my wife? Both Maggie and I pondered that question for a while. Probably my image as a ter...

“I am your handiwork made flesh.  You took beauty and created hideousness, and out of this monstrosity your child will be born... I am the meaning of your deeds. I am the meaning of your so-called love; your destructive, selfish, wanton love.  Your love looks just like hatred.... I was honest and you turned me into your lie.  This is not me.  This is not me.  This is you.” Salman Rushdie’s character, Boonyi, in Shalimar the Clown , spits out the above dialogue to her husband Max Ophuls.  Relationships have the tremendous power to wreak such havoc on people.  Relationships can be devastating.  Relationships can be beautiful too.  It depends on the people involved, their attitudes and motives. Relationships are quite like chemical reactions.  The elements can enter into strong and beautiful bonds creating admirably different compounds.  But unlike in chemical compounds, the individuals should be able to retain their ow...

One of the many creatures that Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classical Little Prince encounters on the earth is a fox.  The creature approaches the Prince with a weird request.  “Please tame me,” pleaded the fox.  The Prince did not know the meaning of ‘tame’.  “It means to establish ties,” explained the fox.  Without the ties, the boy would be just another boy for the fox just as the fox would be just another fox for the boy who don’t need each other in any way.  “But if you tame me,” continues the fox, “then we shall need each other.  To me, you will be unique in all the world.  To you, I shall be unique in all the world.” Little Prince and the Fox When you establish the “ties” the person or thing becomes unique to you, the Prince understands.  He remembers the rose which he used to look after on his own planet.  He watered it, he made a special glass enclosure for its safety, he killed caterpillars for its sake.  The Pri...

The above illustration is from the book  Introducing NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) byJoseph O'Connor & John Seymour. A quote from the book: "Acting wholeheartedly with wisdom means appreciating the relationships and interactions between ourselves and others." We live in the age of the WorldWide Web and the Internet.  Web and Net.  Very evocative metaphors. They bring to mind images of relationships.  They do build up a lot of relationships too: on social networks and chat sites and so on.  Yet why is hatred increasing in the world?  Why more and more of egoism, cruelty, and one-upmanship? Maybe, we have relegated relationships to the virtual world altogether.

Gestalt therapy is one of the many forms of psychological therapies.  One of its founders, Dr Fritz Perls [1893-1970] made the following lines a kind of prayer: I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, And you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it's beautiful. If not, it can't be helped. In my youth, I had typed this and pasted it in a place I could see often.  For years, it remained there.  Finally it was worn out.  By that time, however, it had become part of my memory, my consciousness.  The fact is that I never mastered the art of relating to others.  Maybe, too much ego.  More probably, sheer inability.  Most probably, lack of inclination.  Today, moving towards the autumn of life, I’m still convinced that Perls is right.  Each one of us has to grow in our own way.  There is much th...

"Acting wholeheartedly with wisdom means appreciating the relationships and interactions between ourselves and others," say Joseph O'Connor and John Seymour in their book on NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming).  (The above illustration is taken from that book.)  You can't really conquer peaks of success all alone simply because everything around you is linked to you.  With an invisible string.   When you think you are conquering the peak alone, with no rival beneath you because the sole rival in sight is about to fall off, remember that his fall may mean your fall too.   Why do people actually want to push others down to the bottom?   Helplessness, I think.  Inability to manage others.  Sheer inability.   Weakness makes us aggressive? But is it only weakness?  Can aggression be fun? I was watching a young boy playing a race game on computer.  Whenever he came across a rival in the game he would do ...

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