"...the indulgence is abused and kindness is met with ingratitude..."
For us, this started happening with the workers constructing our house and the material suppliers. We quickly realized that equating "being polite, nice, genteel etc" with "being kind and showing affection" is not true all the time. When the situation demands, it is necessary to show displeasure or even rebuke a person.
Without a display of a negative emotion, people do not simply understand that you have a problem. They are doing a disservice to us in the first place because they don't have the capacity or time or due to some unexpected issue. While they are caught up in their stuff, being nice and kind about an issue seems to them like you are wasting their time with some mild disagreement. We have found that this is the same with raising our 3 year old son. He needs to clearly understand what we do not like and disapprove. But it has to be enveloped in overall affection and should be done without any anger in the heart.
We realize that every time we have an issue with a service provider in the village we live in, what is at stake is not the service but our relationship with that person. And many times, we decide to save the relatonship instead of quality or money in the hope that someone else in the future might benefit from our post transaction discussion. Would we do the same if we really cannot afford to lose quality or money? We don't know.
Unconditional love is tough not at the level of intention but at the level of wisdom (that is, lack of it). Because, in tough situations, without knowing the righ way to channel ones love, it might do more harm than good. On the other hand, if one does not practice unconditonal love in not-so-tough situations, then one would not acquire the practice and wisdom to love in tough situations.
On Aug 3, 2009 Ragu wrote:
"...the indulgence is abused and kindness is met with ingratitude..."
For us, this started happening with the workers constructing our house and the material suppliers. We quickly realized that equating "being polite, nice, genteel etc" with "being kind and showing affection" is not true all the time. When the situation demands, it is necessary to show displeasure or even rebuke a person.
Without a display of a negative emotion, people do not simply understand that you have a problem. They are doing a disservice to us in the first place because they don't have the capacity or time or due to some unexpected issue. While they are caught up in their stuff, being nice and kind about an issue seems to them like you are wasting their time with some mild disagreement. We have found that this is the same with raising our 3 year old son. He needs to clearly understand what we do not like and disapprove. But it has to be enveloped in overall affection and should be done without any anger in the heart.
We realize that every time we have an issue with a service provider in the village we live in, what is at stake is not the service but our relationship with that person. And many times, we decide to save the relatonship instead of quality or money in the hope that someone else in the future might benefit from our post transaction discussion. Would we do the same if we really cannot afford to lose quality or money? We don't know.
Unconditional love is tough not at the level of intention but at the level of wisdom (that is, lack of it). Because, in tough situations, without knowing the righ way to channel ones love, it might do more harm than good. On the other hand, if one does not practice unconditonal love in not-so-tough situations, then one would not acquire the practice and wisdom to love in tough situations.