Bestowing pity

In psychological terms, our minds have a certain bandwidth within which we can tolerate discomfort, a certain speed range in which we can drive with ease, taking care of the challenges and problems. This is known as the window of tolerance.

If we cross the upward barrier in this speed range, we feel terrified, guilty or shameful. If we are below the bottom threshold of this window, we feel lonely, bored, alienated and numb. Remaining within the Window Of Tolerance is our daily challenge as we zig-zag between various emotions and try to keep ourselves sane by self-regulating the mind to remain in the ‘harmonious’ window, while not being stagnant.

If we continuously feel a lot of distress and draining, we should recover ourselves by moderation in eating and drinking, meditation, reading, exercising, and ample rest.

We need to be aware of the direction and trajectory of our moods, emotions and feelings, and make use of introspection and self-observation to get us out of possible pitfalls, avoiding a ‘crash landing’ at a later stage if we do not pay attention.

We perhaps don't realise that seeing another person's face can discourage us from speaking the truth. We may hold back and edit our presentation in the light of their reactions.

With Sigmund Freud's example in mind, we should find our own forms of horizontal conversation. After dinner, we might suggest that we all go and lie down somewhere and become newly conscious of voices and nuances when we don't have to look at others' expressions.

Instead of making relationships complicated and overambitious, we can just take care of these three essential but overlooked aspects:

1. Kindness: A person who is humane and kind, gentle and not too serious.
2. Shared Vulnerability: A person who is a good, empathetic listener, and makes us open comfortably about our anxieties, problems and worries.
3. Understanding: Someone who has a deep understanding of our traits, quirks, features, obsessions, and the way we see the world. Someone who is interesting enough for us to want to understand.

Paradoxically, by limiting our expectations about our relationship, we can concentrate on the three critical ingredients of kindness, understanding and vulnerability, and have a simple yet loving connection.

By simplifying and clarifying, we can release ourselves from our complicated conflicts and pursue a deep and profound bond.

As grown-ups, we have choices. We are not small children where we have to depend on our parents for everything.

We could work as a bus conductor or retrain as a psychotherapist. We could volunteer in an emergency shelter. We can throw ourselves into learning a new language or take a university degree. We can look up old and trusted friends or make new friends.

To increase our chances of fulfillment, we need to feed our imagination and provide them with endless examples of alternative narratives, so they are more able to come up with plan Bs. We should practice to picture better ways to be.

As part of creative classes, adolescents should be asked to produce narratives like: If I lost everything and had to start up again, I will... They should be asked to make a list of 20 things that currently make life meaningful, then have to cross them all off and find ten more.

When dealing with someone annoying, the way forward is not with silence or rage. We are ideally looking for a way to be polite and honest, or civil and forthright.

To achieve this, we should accept that not everything we desire will please others. We could explore and hold on to what we want nevertheless. At the same time, we should distinguish between what someone does and what they meant to do.

We're seldom very good at perceiving someone's motives when an incident drives us mad. We see intention where there was none and escalate a situation when the agitated response is not warranted.

The less we like ourselves, the more we may appear in our own eyes as plausible targets for mockery and harm. The ideal complaint emerges when we remove the paranoid assumption.

Diplomacy is the art of promoting an idea or cause without unnecessarily inflaming passions.

It involves an understanding of the many parts of human nature that can lead to strife and a commitment to handle these with foresight and grace.

Within a negotiation with someone, there is often a request that they change in some way.

A diplomat knows that it is futile to state the call to change too directly as many insist on having their way. Behind the arguing may lie a need for appreciation and esteem.

Modern life has provided us with a level of freedom that few of us know how to handle. Most of us are going through life doing whatever we want to do, and yet, paradoxically, we are not experiencing what real freedom is.

It’s the mentality of our early years, the education thrust upon us, the belief patterns, rules and regulations that make us fearful of even thinking of changing anything about our lives.

We find out that the people we trusted were not trustworthy, the religion, belief pattern, family value or company policy that we blindly followed, was not worth it.

When we begin to question reality and true happiness, when the uncertain moments overwhelm us, then we are shocked to see that no one really cares or knows.

The mind seems terrified of the states of calm and relaxation as if work was a distraction to not let the mind come close to the worries and the existential queries. It saddles us with guilt and shame on the life we have lived, and the things that never materialized.

Doing nothing, it seems, becomes harder than doing any work that fills our time and keeps our mind engaged.

Our work has a little known value: protecting us from a sense of despair and agony, and keeping us from doing the most difficult task: Doing Nothing.

The mind has to be kept engaged by providing it with mild challenges, one after the other, to keep it from falling into an abyss doom and terror.

Even if we feel that we have made our point, painstakingly making our parents understand the time we felt they did us wrong, we erroneously assume that our twenty-minute discussion will suddenly cure them of behavioural patterns that are in effect from several decades.

An outright bad parent is easier to handle, but the problem is complicated when the same parent is also caring, loving and is a genuine well-wisher.

While we may think that our parents are conflicted personalities, we are unconsciously having the same kind of behavioural patterns.

We periodically love and hate our parents, and have them imbibed in our body and mind, right down to mannerisms and quirks. We care for them yet sometimes wish to stay away from them.