I remember the days when I was in school, when I was young,
when I was happy. 24 hours went by in a jiffy. Before you knew it was already
night and time to sleep. Things around us kept us on our toes so much so that
we dint have the time and inclination to reflect within. And
thank god we dint. The world that we were a part of was so small. My world was
confined within my colony. School, home and play ground. That’s it. That was
all I knew. Sadly then I grew up and my borders began to expand. My world grew bigger and bigger until I was done with my graduation. Ostensibly growth
of borders with respect to happiness was a forward exponential graph. And therefore happiness also descends when borders starts shrinking. That was a revelation for which I was not prepared and had to face its
consequences. As my world started narrowing, my inner antennas were alerted and
gave me a heck of a time within. I slept every night with millions of questions
unanswered and billions of random nasty thoughts that haunted. I was tired, I
was exhausted and after a day’s work all I wanted was a good sleep and here I
was barred from it.
I decided to take a week off and go somewhere alone and
sought things out with myself and then begin my process fervently and hope for
peace. With immense resolve, I discovered that the root of all that I was
feeling was the thread I tied to different people and circumstances knowingly
and unknowingly. Either the thread was complexly entangled or tied to a wrong
person all together. Both are equally hazardous to one’s life. And then in one
of those nights in solitude I accidentally went through this poem by William
Blake named poison tree and the doors of my deluded mind opened for good.
A poison tree is a very basic message for maintaining loving
relationship through communication. The key is to communicate. The poem’s first
lines goes
“I was angry with my friend; I told my wrath, my wrath did end …I was angry
with my foe; I told it not, my wrath did grow”. Such a simple way to express a
profound truth. When you feel something and you have the common sense and the
courage to express that feeling to our loved ones, the rage and the fury
disappear, almost as if by magic.
My inclination in the past has often been to stay silent when
I feel angry. I admit to wanting to stew about it, play it over and over in my
mind, where I have extended dialogues with the person I feel angry towards. As
long as I take this position of freezing out my loved ones or friends, the
wrath persists. Yet when it finally does come out and we are able to
communicate about it, expressing our authentic feelings, regardless of how
absurd they may sound to the other person, magically and almost instantaneously
the fury subsides. “Was angry with my foe, told not and wrath did grow” this is
precisely the lesson that I have had to learn, I admit to still working on it
each and every day.
In past relationships I created foes out of those I loved
the most. The moment I made them foes, I kept my wrath inside, playing intellectual
games with myself, and creating an unbelievably complex scenario that only I
was privy to. Thus the inclination
to keep my wrath within, unexpressed, allowed me to create the poison
tree. I would rather water it with my tears and sun it with my deceitful
smiles. And the result? It would continue to grow it and bear fruits. And the
fruits are definitely poisonous. It does not only apply to personal relationships,
but in dealing with everyone in your life. Anytime you feel that spark go off
inside you, and your wrath begins to grow, you are headed to a potential
morass. The way out of that potential morass is to stop and make that person a
friend rather than a foe. I think honesty and no nonsense statement will put
the wrath aside and inhibit the growth of a poison tree that will ultimately
destroy you.
Similarly in close relationships, when you feel something
like anger, practice mustering up the courage to say how you feel without being
abusive or loud. I have found that when I give the silent treatment the anger
doesn’t subside. In
fact, it grows worse because both of us are growing our own poison tree
inside because we have made foes of each other. When we sit down and express
how am feeling and what exactly my disappointments are, it generally leads to an open discussion
in which we both get to express ourselves and ends with a hug. I don’t believe
in the world famous statement that everyone use to console themselves “time
will heal”. By not communicating we only nurture the wrath rather than killing
it.
The initial steps would be difficult, could be weird as
well, probably the other person won’t like it and perhaps the relation could go
worse. Thinking rationally about a problem will make you silent and passive and
indifferent, and with distorted peace. In a relationship it’s not about of who
is right or wrong, rational or irrational, it’s about who’s life and peace. Rationality at the cost of one’s peace makes
absolutely no sense. Especially with such a complex and difficult domain of
life called relationship where there is no thumb rule or fixed check points to
cross. Each one has his own race to run. It is a paradox. I am sure it takes courage to take the first step, but the point is you have nothing to lose, the worst that can
happen has already happened. What more are you afraid to lose?
It is inevitable in any partnership for two people to have
conflict. I often express my feeling that in any relationship in which two
people agree on everything, one of them is unnecessary. Your soul
mate is often a person who is most unlike you, the one who can push the
buttons that send you into frenzy. That person is your soul
mate precisely because of this power. When you find yourself in a fury, the
person you perceive as causing it is your greatest teacher at that moment. That
person is teaching you something
that you have not yet mastered yourself, that you still do not know how
to choose peace as that button is being pushed.
The way to that absolute peace is to tell your friend or
your lover or your child or your parent or your mother in law exactly how you
feel. Do this from a position of being detached and honest and watch how your
wrath disappears. You will have removed entirely the possibility of nurturing
and producing a poison tree. The more you can create an atmosphere of open
honesty, particularly regarding areas of disagreement, the less likely
disagreements will become disagreeable. It is in the time of being disagreeable
that a seedling sprouts and eventually nourishes a poison tree.
