Its about every single person who met you in your journey of life. This word not only includes father, mother, brother, sister, cousine and all thousands of relatives, but also includes what an abstraction belonging you sense for anyone who is in your life. Friends, colegues, knowns, unknowns, strangers, closely knit bond with anyone... you share a relation to anyone and everyone. One is relative not only to the family, but to this world in one way of another. I had a very strange feeling at one point of time, when I was going through a mental crisis night, that how I am saying one is relative to me, and in what sense. And the answer I ended up with was, everything is relative. It start with "me"/"I", that is self, and it got unbounded to the universe. The starting point is "I". If "I" is disconnected, somewhere, one will not be able to relate himself/herself with anyone, including family, parents. Finding self, connecting with "I" is so important so that nothing can be defined without it. Its a relation you share with yourself, your thoughts about yourself, how you link you and yourself is very important stating point for any journey.
In our environment, relation can be defined very easily, very normally. Father, mother, blood relations, how someone get maternal relative, how someone get paternal relative, its not any science. Science and study is, how many can't find any relation taken for granted? Almost all... in any or every sense, what a relation means in a society has been taken for granted. If she is my daughter, she will do this anyways, reasonbeing, she is "my" daughter. "My" kills. "My" is the utter most wrong relation, "I" is important.
Where you stand, what you do, where you are... when a sense of "my" thing comes, questions falls like a storm. When I think of "I" relationship first, its like a spring, I feel no complication in anything, it blossom love all over. Finding anything is very simple, relatives are very normal things, defining relation is very small here... "Someone in the same family; someone connected by blood"... Are we not a family as a whole? For and of this existence? In this space? For this very moment?
I was in a queue today for some work and when it was my turn, the clerk seen my name and smiled. He said my last name and said "Ohh... so you are Mr. *****"? I said yes, I am. He replied, very good, its great. I asked him what is great in this? He was very disappointed by my answer and got pissed off. Then he told me that he was of the same surname. I told him one thing... If this is how you think you relate to me, "being a common surname", I am feeling pity for me and you... I wish if you could have related me with you and the whole queue with the simplest relation we all have and we share, i.e. a relation of a human to human, this place and the world would have been a much better and beautiful place. (Mine and someone's personal thoughts... no hard feelings)
The another thing I noticed was a parent-child relationship. "If you are doing this, you are not my daughter/son". Taken for granted kills. If this is kind of loan on me to be someone's child, I better choose not to pay that, but alas, in this 21st century also, people are still slaves of these kind of relationships, they have to be, sometimes, there is no other way. Its completely a lack and disconnect of oneself with "I", parents also, children too. Its a different topic altogether to discuss.
Relation, in my sense, is a very simple and cosmic thing. Its inconceivably extended in space and time. It can't be just a family and blood thing. Its with everyone and everywhere. Its with all in the journey of finding Self, and to relate oneself to one, in the form of father, mother, relatives, friends, to the world. Why to give a small definition to the word "relation"? Its simple... "How I can relate myself to you...?". How I can associate myself with you...? Not just because of any pressure, but from my innermost soul, how and in what form I have to accept you? That's being making a reference, a talk. Not just defined things, but beyond that. Not just because one's father gave all the things one needed, but how actually he defined a relation with you. What he added into one, what he subtracted from one, what a thought process he developed inside one, and that what defines how he will be able and how one will be able to get relate with.
I am in between so many theories and thoughts, books and philosophies, write-ups and discussions... trying to define a relation!!!
Will write back soon on this... I want to...
"The only reason we don't open our hearts and minds to other people is that they trigger confusion in us that we don't feel brave enough or sane enough to deal with. To the degree that we look clearly and compassionately at ourselves, we feel confident and fearless about looking into someone else's eyes." - Pema Chodron
God Bless...
