A conversation between father and son:
“You are eating sweets in the end. You should eat it before you eat the curd rice”
“No, I don’t like it before the curd rice. I don't like to eat sweets on the same plate as my lunch. I like to eat afterwards on a separate plate”
“See, how I eat it? I eat sweet on the same plate and before eating the curd rice, eat like me”
“I don’t like to eat like that”
“That is not the right way to eat”
“Why not?”
“Don’t ask too many questions. Do as I do.”
Another place another conversation. You can guess the participants.
“You should have a bath and then enter the kitchen to cook”
“I don’t like that. When I cook, I get dirty and sweaty. So I like to have a bath after I complete all the cooking”
“See how I manage it. I always have a bath and then cook. I don’t become dirty or sweaty after cooking. I have been doing it for the last twenty years”
“Maybe you don’t, I do feel cleaner if I have a bath after cooking rather than before cooking”
“You talk too much. Why don’t you do what I do?”
The message conveyed often in relationships is, the way I do things is better than the way you do things. I will like you better if you do things the way I do. Don’t look at your comfort, convenience, or preference. For a better life, be like me. Whether between parents and children, between siblings or between spouses, we constantly try to make the other person become like us and we love it when they give up their individuality and become like us whether they like it or not. A lot of emotional blackmail happens to make the other person like us. Does it increase harmony in relationships? I feel it just increases resentment which may or may not be expressed.
Why is there only one way of doing things? Why is our way of doing things the best way of doing things? What prevents us from accepting other people being different when there is no harm in it or does not affect the household in any way? Is there only one way to cook? Only one way to dress? Only one way to eat? Isn’t encouraging individuality better? Isn’t it good to see others different from us? Do we want our clones around us? Harmony in relationships is nurtured when we accept others for the way they are and stop saying, “Why are you like you, be like me,” isn’t it?