Tag Archives: happiness

What Sustains Relationship?

01 Friday Jan 2016

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Every person walks into a relationship with her/his own life experiences. No one enters into someone’s life for no reason. Its reasons may be invisible to us but there are some purposes in our social engagements. One benefit of social engagement is to develop our own principles/ethics in life. We learn about our own personal and relational ethics/principles when we enter into life experiences of others. The richness of our life depends on the quality of relationships we are in. Relationships have significant influences on who we are and how we are with the Other.

Buber (1979) differentiates relationships focusing on the Other as “Thou” from those  viewing the Other as ‘It”. Those of us caught in the pattern of “I–It” relationship connect with the Other as an object. The Other as ‘It’ becomes a means to our own personal ends. The “I” is driven/directed by his/her own egocentric needs. The Other is set at a distance and the “I” don’t attempt to experience the Other’s side. The Other is absent as a person, as a being, in the relationship. The Other is a means to an end rather than being a partner in dialogue. The “I-It” relationship is monological and subjective rather than dialogical and inter-human.

In an “I- Thou” relationship, unlike “I – It”, a person turns toward the Other and confirms his or her being.  The “I- Thou” relationship is characterized by “mutuality, directness, present-ness, intensity, and ineffability” (Friedman, 1960).

Relationships collapse when people are trapped in an “I-It” relationship. “I- It” relationship doesn’t have the capacity to last and fulfill relational needs of parties. In the “I- It” engagement, we constantly search for another “It” to bring us joy and happiness; nothing seems to be enough. Treating and viewing the Other as “It” is a recipe for disaster which closes down potential venues to personal and relational growth. The only way out is our awareness to search for ways of reconnecting to our principles/ethics to re-connect with the Other in a new way.

We are able to transform an “I-It’ encounter to an “I-Thou” relationship.  What makes it possible lies in our ability to revise our ethics in the relationship; to become responsible to the Other. This is the only way to identification and reconstruction of our personal and relational ethics. This is a gateway to experiencing ourselves as “relational beings” (Gergen 2009). When we enter into the “I- Thou” relationship, we become part of an open ever-evolving process. There is no endpoint or a tangible goal. We become multi-dimensional and, then, larger than life.

Think about relationships that you are in. When thinking of the quality of your relationship with the Other person, how do you describe the Other person? Has the Other person become an “It” or “Thou”? There is a direct link between your problems in the relationship and you viewing the Other as “It”. Review your ethics and redraw the definition of your relationship with the Other. When doing so, you would be amazed to see what becomes possible to you.

Happy possibilities!

Tahereh Barati

 

Home!

26 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by in poetry, Reflection

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He says: are you going home?

I say: it depends how you define it.

He says: yes, you are going home

I say: not sure, where home is.

This conversation never ends!

Where is HOME?

Home is where your heart and mind meet and match

Home is where people share the same values

Where there is inclusion, laughter, joy, happy moments!

When you are with me

When voices of freedom ring!

Yes, that is home!

 

Tahereh Barati

Relational definition of Joy!

03 Sunday Feb 2013

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Human beings are taught to seek, make and have a ‘better, fun, more fulfilling and happy life’. We want to be happy and experience joy in life. We seek every avenues to make ourselves and our loved ones happy.  But what is a ‘better fun fulfilling joyful and happy life’? Who defines these notions?

We don’t live alone, we live in relationship. We socialize and learn from our families and peers. We are influenced by our social cultural contexts. We try to adopt, accept and, at times, question definitions given to us by our social networks. We want to make sense of things, ourselves and our experiences.

I am wondering how often you practice to step outside of your social cultural contexts to give some thought to notions such as joy, happiness and fulfillment. Michele Foucault says  “… We should fight against the impoverishment of the relational fabric …. Rather than arguing that rights are fundamental and natural to the individual, we should try to imagine and create a new relational right that permits all possible types of relations to exist and not be prevented, blocked, or annulled by impoverished relational institutions”….

Do you think it is possible to view and re-view these concepts outside of impoverished social norms and institutions? What do you have to defy to create or co-create your own relational definitions of those concepts?

Fun, joy and happiness don’t exist by itself, they are in relation to other things. Their meanings are related to what we give value to. To me, these notions are names to experiences of ‘genuine connection to self, others and nature’. My relational definition of these concepts might be different from yours because we might value and locate sources of ‘joy happy life’ in different places.   Therefore, each relationship may need to identify its core vlaues and define these notions in its own relational context.

It is not easy to become fully aware of our different states of being. It is not easy to differentiate between what you may call as ‘happy fun joyful life’ and what society may call as ‘happy fun joyful life’. The ability to step outside of our social norms may allow a creation of new meanings.  This ability may lead to further self-knowledge, self- awareness and consequently enhance our critical thinking.

The state of Joy is one of the notions that could have many various meanings to any of us.  To shed some light on the process of defining this notion relationally, I would like to invite you to reflect on the following questions:

  • What is your relational definition of ‘fun happy and joyful’ life?
  • Do you see ‘connecting moments’ as  part of ‘fun joyful and happy life’? Why?
  • Does remembering your ‘connecting moments’ bring joy to you?
  • How often do you remember your ‘connecting moments’ in life? What effects does it have on you, when retelling stories of connection?
  • If you were going to describe your ‘joyful connecting moments’ by using imagery, What would it look like?

Happy possibilities and Have a joyful life,

Tahereh Barati, M.A, RMFT