How to Deal With Family Clashes?
Questioner: Thank you for the amazing discussion. My question is — my extended family is dysfunctional, and this has caused conflict between my parents, and due to poor conflict resolution between them, this issue pops up repeatedly in my own life. I tried to focus on living my best, but it causes me a lot of grief and sadness to see my parents suffer. I love my parents very much and try to help them.
And having listened to what you just said, am I correct in understanding that I should look beyond this? That I can do my best to help them, but I should also just try to help everyone else? And generally, what should people do when they are in situations like this?
Acharya Prashant: See, in helping somebody who has made a mistake and is suffering because of that, should we not be sure that we are not repeating the same mistake? See, all the associations, the bonds and the knots, the familial relationships — that's what gets bad. And let's say that got bad for your parents. Things are not great when it comes to your parents and their relatives, right?
So what's the reason the parents are facing sorrow? The reason is relationships, right? Now when you try to focus exclusively on your parents, are you too not repeating what they did at a macro level?
Questioner: Perhaps, yeah. I guess when you see somebody in conflict and you want to deescalate that, but you're not sure, how?
Acharya Prashant: You see, it's not just somebody we see in conflict. We are very selective about the ones we choose to help, are we not? And that might not help the ones we are trying to reach out to. And there might be many more, far more deserving ones just waiting somewhere, just queued up to receive your assistance, and they are deprived because our exclusive focus is on the ones we are bodily related to. It doesn't help. I fully appreciate the sentiment.
We want to do good to the ones we are related to and we have long stretches of memories with all kinds of identifications. I fully appreciate that. But I also know that it doesn't always work this way. Sometimes what works better is shifting of focus to more appropriate areas.
Remember, nobody can be helped beyond their consent. That's the nature of life.
Irrespective of how much you want to help someone, they will decide how much to be helped. It is not like physical medicine, where you can anesthetize someone and conduct a surgery even without the consent of the patient, and yet the results might be good. That can be done at the physical, the gross level — that cannot be done at the inner level.
Questioner: What is my role if I'm witness to the conflict? And do I just excuse myself and just say, “You need to figure this out, and I am going to go on a walk,” or something like that? Or do I...?
Acharya Prashant: You need to maybe make yourself less available. Witness is a very pure, very special word.
You are a witness only when you are not involved at all. On the other hand, we are very, very involved. We are never witnesses.
When you are indeed a witness, then you witness everything, not just your own family. There is so much in the world to be impartially seen. And if you can look at things at a macro level, then probably we are close to witnessing. Right now, we are involved. We are involved for our personal sake. “I'm doing it because it is my family.” Now the catch here is — the very problem has started because of this sentiment. You see —
Body identification is the mother of all problems.
And then I want to help my parents because I'm bodily identified with them. How can the problem be extended to become a solution? So it might just help to defocus. Things take their time. When you defocus, you will get a fresh perspective. You will find that your ability to help has been enhanced by working with the right people. And so, when the right time presents itself, you'll be in a better position to help even your own family members.
If you are studying medicine, you don't want to study in a room full of your family members, do you?
Questioner: No.
Acharya Prashant: No. You want to be away somewhere in a medical college, and you want to be away from the den of the family. And if you are away and do it successfully over there in a college, then one day probably you might return to treat your family members. But if you stay with them and you keep watching their daily tussles and collisions, it's no good for any party. They will continue to do what they do, and you will find that you are developing no muscles to help them or anybody else.
Questioner: So I live far away, but I think what you said also applies to constant communication.
Acharya Prashant: Yeah. That's what... Yeah. When I said being with them, that also means — (talk on the phone).
Questioner: Yeah. Thank you.
Acharya Prashant: Welcome.
