The True Purpose of Relationships

The Sankranti festival offers us an auspicious time to reflect on the role of our relationships and how we relate in life. After all, Sankranti is nothing but Sangh-Kranti – the opportunity to come together and collectively transform our lives by improving the quality of our relationships.

Is there anything precious in our lives that we need to cherish and value? What about our relations? Have we ever reflected what our relationships are bringing in our lives? Have we gone deeper to think about the true purpose of relations?

Most of us mistakenly assume relationships as a medium that fulfills our needs or completes us. However, the true purpose of relationships is not to complete each other but to share our completeness with each other. You are already complete; complete with overflowing love, unbridled joy and unbroken peace in your heart. Relationships are a medium to experience and express these divine qualities of love, joy and peace that are inherent within you.

How do you feel when a two-year old kid smiles at you innocently? It’s a lovely feeling. Is that feeling coming from outside you or from within? Your feelings are already within you. Love is already present within you. The kid or your relations is an excuse—a beautiful excuse—to experience and express the feelings of love you are already brimming with.

We have been blessed with various relations that facilitate the awakening of supreme love and faith within us. When we don’t realize the purpose and value of our family, we not only start ignoring them, but we start using our relations to fulfill our personal needs.

The family into which we were born in this world is a custom-made arrangement made especially for each of us. Therefore, instead of blaming and complaining, we can be grateful and happy for this exceptional arrangement and explore the lessons of life that we need to learn through our daily interactions with them. Our family can become an instrument to unfold the source of eternal joy and love within us.

If we can have faith on one another and if we can give love, only then can real happiness emerge from our hearts. Even a little bit of faith and love gives so much happiness. Imagine the sheer bliss that can be felt when love and faith are completely realized! Arrangements for the same have been provided on Earth. We all do get the taste at times, but we tend to forget our real goal by being stuck in unloving thoughts and unhealthy emotions that arise during undesirable events. At such junctures, it helps immensely to be reminded of the real purpose of all this: It is for releasing supreme love and faith that we are born on Earth, with which the mind becomes pure, loving, and steadfast.

When everything in the family is going hunky-dory, as per the mind’s whims, the mind does not get the necessary training to make itself pure, loving and steadfast in those circumstances. The challenges we face are actually a doorway to the treasure of love present within us. We ought to check if we’re utilizing every situation and deriving benefit from the arrangement that has been provided on Earth or whether we’re feeling miserable.

If we can make our relationships the right medium for collective growth, then we will never feel troubled by them. Relationships are spiritual teachers. Each relationship teaches us profoundly about ourselves, perhaps more than any book or teacher could.

We need to learn to view every relation in a new light and fill every relationship with supreme love. While human love is limited by conditions, supreme love knows no limits or conditions. Love expresses itself as unconditional acceptance, forgiveness, letting go and compassion. Love is a journey and a destination too.

This Makarsankranti, let us come together and experience that supreme love. Let’s forgive and experience the joy within despite adversity in the family. Let’s keep the torch of understanding burning bright so that we never forget the real purpose of relationships. Then relationships won’t be just a formality, a responsibility, or a burden, but an expression of love and joy!