Relationships are the lifeblood of
our journey through this world. Good relationships not only can help us
navigate through the challenges of this life more easily but they can be
fulfilling and as well invigorating. Bad relationships on the other hand can
put one’s life dead in its track. Ask a divorced person who has left a married
life – or a person who ended up changing his work due to bad relationships – or
ask family members devastated and shattered due to family squabbles. They will
all attest to the powerful impact of bad relationships in changing the course
of one’s life, while leaving them debilitated in the process.
It’s a no-brainer that good
relationships provide the energy that blooms our lives. Building and
maintaining good relationships is an art as well as a science, the underlying
principles of which come together in a mesmerizing way to make it one of the
most important subjects for the human species. Whether realized earlier in life
or later through heat of experience, one eventually comes to grips with the
fact that the principles of relationships must be learned – and when
mastered effectively, enables one to use good judgment, to become more
empathetic, become more sensitive to human emotions, better understand
personalities, and so much more. All of a sudden, life changes – feels less
complicated, more fulfilling, and more controlled.
But one wonders why we humans have
made such a promising pursuit of building and maintaining superb relationships
not only very complex, convoluted and confusing but many of us fail miserably
even at the very basics. Even more baffling is that many of us Muslims fail to
follow the ready made recipes that Islam provides us along with
the living example of the Prophet Muhammad (SAWS), who among many other things
was a master of human relationships. No wonder that books on relationships sell
more than any other specific topic.
So, a review of the basics is in
order –
Relationships can be painful –
No one would argue that being in
relationships has the potential to cause enormous mental pain and agony.
Whether it’s a spouse verbally assaulting the spouse, a child defying parents
and family values, friends violating a trust, or a supervisor putting an
employee down, these relationship potholes can wreck souls, can cause us to get
a heavy heart and a burdened mind, makes us cry, leaves us frustrated and
indifferent and at times leaves us wondering about the value of such
relationships in the first place. What’s worse is that when we continue to live
in such relationships, we rob our lives of the energy and enthusiasm that could
have shaped our lives so much differently than what it ultimately becomes.
The “blame game” rules such
relationships. One’s ego is the master. People’s self worth is trampled. Others
are at fault. Justice is not present. Life does not seem “fair”. One feels
victimized. Insensitivity to feelings rules and the emotional roller coaster
seems endless.
Such relationships are in need of
serious repair.
Relationships can be pleasing and
fulfilling –
On the flip side, healthy
relationships can be so much rewarding. Ask a parent about how proud they feel
to have raised good and respectful children. Ask a husband or wife about the
respect they get from each other. Ask fast friends about the trust they have
for each other. Ask strong business partners about the respect they have for
each other and so on. Love, trust, and respect uplift our souls, make our lives
more fulfilling and meaningful, and make us thankful for our relationships.
Such relationships need not just be
cherished but more importantly they need to be maintained.
Relationships must be actively
managed (build, maintain, and if necessary repair) –
So, how do we manage the pain and
pleasure associated with such relationships? It’s actually quite simple – in
theory at least. You manage a relationship by actively working on it and by
constantly renewing it. If you are even a moderately practicing Muslim, you
know how that works. You know that relationship with your Creator is the most
important one. Even in those cases, the relationship must be renewed.
Consider the saying of the Prophet
(SAWS) who said, “Faith wears out in your heart as clothes wear out, so
ask Allah to renew the faith in your hearts.”
(narrated by al-Haakim in his Mustadrak and al-Tabaraani in his Mu’jam with a
saheeh isnaad).
So, again – you manage relationships
by actively working on them. And that means that if you are having challenges
with your relationships, you should step out of your “default mode” in how you
deal with relationships.
You see, most of us manage
relationships in a “default mode”. That’s the mode that we learn and develop
subconsciously while growing up. The default mode is the way we are mentally
wired to deal with people and relationships in general. The better our
relationships were managed at home while growing up, the better our default
mode would be and the better we would be to build and maintain good
relationships with others, our spouses, and other acquaintances. Growing up
while observing families in lousy relationships makes ones default mode develop
in the same manner – something that other people can’t live with – unless of
course one takes concrete steps to change those learned behaviors. For example,
did you know that research has established that most criminals come from broken
homes, where they were abused as children while growing up? Although this scary
fact applies to only a small fraction of people, it serves to illustrate the
point that when unchecked, bad relationships can lead to devastating
consequences.
Shifting out of your default mode of
dealing with relationships is about a change in attitude toward other people –
it’s about a change that others can notice – it’s about expressing your
appreciation, and doing things for others. For some of us it’s easy and for
some it’s not.
Ideally, one should start learning
from early childhood the basics of building and maintaining good relationships.
No wonder that a number of schools now have adopted curriculum that teaches
building good relationship skills right from pre-school years. In parallel,
parents should strive to maintain a healthy social environment at home as well.
Although no formal research done on this topic, many observations attest to the
fact that unfortunately in most Muslim countries, the awareness for such
education is far less than what exists in western societies. That is very
unfortunate as the life of the prophet (SAWS) is exemplary in how well he
treated people, families, children and encouraged parents to treat children.
Once children are raised in homes
where they are taught to respect and manage relationships, it in turn helps
them to grow up to be strong individuals as they become adept at building and
maintaining very strong relationships with people in all walks of life. Doing
so becomes a second nature and helps the person in relationships with family,
friends and work. The “default mode” of such people thus turns out to be quite
healthy.
Have you ever wondered about what
your default mode is in dealing with people? Do your loved ones cherish your
behavior or do they run from your verbal assaults? Reflect on this hadith: ‘Abdullah
bin ‘Amr bin Al-’As, may Allah be pleased with them, said: A person asked
Allah’s Messenger (may peace and blessings be upon him) who among Muslims was
better. Upon this (the Holy Prophet) remarked: One from whose hand and tongue
Muslims are safe.
So, assess your default mode of
dealing with people, families and friends – if you don’t like it and if you
believe that your loved ones don’t like it too, may be it’s time to consider
making some changes – starting today – starting now!
Once you start making the change, you
will notice that it is not rocket science. In fact, most of you exercise those
skills in business settings regularly. For example, what will you do to
maintain a good business relationship that is very vital for your business and
income? More commonly it involves some of the following:
- Being empathetic to your client needs – listening with an open mind and heart
- Being very serious and sincere to eliminate any misunderstandings
- Going of your way to be appreciative of the relationship that you have with them
- Going out of your way to be apologetic
- Always keeping a pleasing and charming attitude
- and so on…
Many of us in our business and
professional dealings do the above constantly. The sense of purpose in the need
to keep our business going and flourishing, makes us not only do the above but
makes many of us come up with the most creative and innovative ways to keep our
business partners happy. It’s a no-brainer. It’s common sense.
But not very surprisingly, the same
“brain” and “sense” starts to malfunction when it comes to personal
relationships within our families. That’s where something gets lost in the
process. So, it’s not that we do not know how to manage relationships – we just
prioritize things differently and we don’t make the right connections in our
minds.
Prioritize your relationships –
Do you know anyone who spends more
time strengthening relationships with their friends and business partners than
their own families? Does that make sense? Let’s face it – certain relationships
are more important than others and therefore deserve more time and effort than
others. For example, it just would not make sense for you to hold your friends
in high respect while you mistreat your parents. You can’t abandon your own
children and be helping other children. Charity always begins at home.
Even in Islam that teaches respect,
love, patience and understanding as the cornerstone of all relationships, certain
relationships are given more priority over others. There are numerous accounts
in the Quran and Hadith about the importance given to certain relations. For
example, in a well-known hadith, Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) said: “A man
came to the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and
said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, who among the people is most deserving of my good
companionship?’ He said, ‘Your mother.’ The man asked, ‘Then who?’ He said,
‘Your mother.’ He asked, then who?’ He said, ‘Your mother.’ He asked, ‘Then
who?’ He said, ‘Your father.’”
It is also reported, on the authority
of Ayesha (R.A.) and Ibn Umar (R.A.) that the messenger of Allah, Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) said “The Angel Jibra’il (A.S.)
counseled me so frequently regarding the rights of the neighbor that I feared,
he too would be declared an heir.”
Just because you are “around” your
family members more, doesn’t mean that you spend the least amount of time
nurturing those relationships.
Allah says (interpretation of the
meaning): “Would you then, if you were given the authority, do mischief in the
land, and sever your ties of kinship? Such are they whom Allah has cursed, so
that He has made them deaf and blinded their sight” [Surah Muhammad 47:22]
And the Prophet (peace and blessings
of Allah be upon him) said: “No one who severs the ties of kinship will enter
Paradise.” Narrated by Muslim in his Saheeh.
Relationships can be repaired –
Look around you and you won’t have to
look far to see a broken home, or a community at odds with itself. Everyone
probably knows someone (if not within our own circles) who walks angry at
someone, hurt by someone, frustrated with someone, irritated by others, and
sick of life in general.
Such relationships that involve
people holding grudges against others, accompanied by emotional roller
coasters, verbal assaults and emotional outbursts obviously involve a lot of
pain and thus need an active reparation process.
More often than not, spousal
relationship topics top all other form of relationships that need repair. So,
it needs specific mention. How would you classify your relationship with your
spouse? Is it bad or routine at best? Once relationships become routine,
spouses in a troubled relationship are less forgiving, amplify mistakes, and
throw verbal assaults more than they are cheerful to each other. What one spouse
does for the other as part of a routine activity of running household errands,
working to make a living, raising children, etc. is taken for granted. For
example, “appreciation” does not cross the wife’s mind for her husband working
hard to make a living and the husband does not see anything extraordinary in
the mother keeping the house on track and raising children.
As the focus in such
“boring-to-get-worse-soon” relationships shifts from the good to the bad and
even more to the ugly, there is a need to break that thinking pattern and to
start focusing on the “good”. With time, the tendency is to start ignoring the
qualities and instead to focus on the negatives. The Prophet Muhammad
(peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: “No believing man should hate
a believing woman: if he dislikes one of her characteristics, he will like
another.” (Reported by Muslim, 36). The prophet (SAWS) also said as narrated by
Abu Hurairah: “He who does not thank people, does not thank Allah”. (Ahmad,
Tirmidhi)
So, sprinkle a few words of
understanding and appreciation in the routine or not so routine relationships
and you will see your relationships improve, hearts clamed and souls less
jittery. You just can’t repair a relationship without these basics – else, you
either get a boring relationship or could be headed for more trouble.
Relationships are defined by a
person’s character and mental strength –
A person’s strength in many ways is a
reflection of the strength of his or her relationships. A person who is weak
succumbs to unbridled emotions, uncontrolled anger and erratic thought
processes. These in turn are a perfect recipe for poisoning relationships.
Contrary to some misunderstood cultural beliefs, uncontrolled anger and
emotional outbursts show a person’s weakness rather than his “manly”
attributes. Such a character stems from a person’s upbringing that lacked focus
on Islamic
values. The truth as Islam teaches us is that a strong person manages his emotions
and directs them appropriately to build and manage relationships rather
than using them to damage relationships.
To get a glimpse of how anger should
be handled, we need to study the life of the prophet. When we study the
prophet’s behavior and the behavior of his companions, we will likely
understand that verbal assaults are NOT the way to manage anger. But obviously,
when we are weak, we succumb to the whims and desires of the untrained mind and
in the process unleash such behavior. Abu Hurairah narrated that Prophet
Muhammad (SAWS) said: ” The strong man is not the one who is strong in
wrestling, but the one who controls himself in anger ” (Bukhari, Muslim).
The ultimate relationships is the one
with our Creator –
Finally, let’s not forget that the
ultimate relationship that any one of us can have is that with our Creator.
Establishing such relationship is the cornerstone of an Islamic faith. Such a
relationship also helps fills the gap left out by the anxieties, loneliness,
depressions and other emotional roller coasters that one goes through in life.
Use good old common sense –
Before closing, we all need to remind
ourselves that building and managing healthy relationships and avoiding the
potholes of bad relationships involves the use of basic common sense. Stepping
away from the heat of the moment – correcting others respectfully without
destroying their self worth – disassociating oneself from negative emotions –
reflecting on the cause and effect behavior that shapes good and bad
relationships, and other such basics can bring about clarity and a change in
our attitudes. It can help us break the pattern that we can get repeatedly
pulled into. Remember, what Einstein said – “The definition of stupidity
is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
If your relationships are bad then change how you are contributing to those
relationships. You will be surprised to see how things change.
If we think and reflect, we will
begin to get the answers to the common day to day problems that many of us face
in our daily lives. We will learn that in close relationships, sometimes love
and respect need to supersede the desire to prove oneself right and the other
wrong. Some more thinking and reflection will lead us to the fact that a
daughter-in-law and mother-in-law relationship can rarely be strong if the man
in the middle does not have a good relationship with both. We will learn that
children ought to be taught the essentials of relationships early on in their
life – something that an Islamic education will teach more than their secular
education at school or elsewhere. Thinking and reflection will make it dawn on
us that love and respect in most cases needs to be earned by one’s own behavior
and not demanded and forced. And the list can go on…
Parting remarks –
Finally, if you think these tips
apply to others and not to your situation – think again. The foundation of most
of these insights was taught by our Prophet SAWS and he came with practical
guidelines for the entire humanity at large. That is where we may need to
become strong and change our attitudes.
What do you think? Do you have any
tips and stories that you want to share with others that will help others
strengthen their relationships? Please share them with everyone below.
