A Strange Thing About Relationships

One day I was traveling to another city in a train. I didn’t have a proper place to sit and not much to occupy my mind. Being a lover of nature, I had the chance to rejoice my mind with the scenic beauty that was passing before my eyes with rapid movement of the train. But I was only so much fortunate to have the mere glimpse of all the natural beauty before me; the running wheels were only that kind to me, I had the opportunity to unceasingly watch uncountable beautiful creations of nature on my path but wasn’t permitted to see a single scene for longer period and appreciate it. Many a times I had this wish to stay and live at those apparently beautiful places, to rest for a lifetime beneath those seemingly celestial trees. Infact it was more of an urge than a wish.

But that urge reminded me something about our behavior and manifested me a peculiar thing about our relationships in life. A thought lingered in my mind that at present this weather is pleasant, the trees are before my eyes but are actually far; after sometimes this weather shall not remain the same as it is now and the ground below the tree shan’t always as comforting and safe as I think of it now. And in the same manner that urge to spend a lifetime there shall not remain the same. But that thought made me ponder over a little more about the reason for such a dramatic change that may occur in my desire. Why is it so that when I am far away from the desired place I wish to be there for my lifetime and when I shall be at that very place I may not find that place as divine as I find it now? This question had become a bottleneck for other thoughts. To my rescue, a beautiful idea is bestowed on my mind. The idea was lucid but it brought the much-needed satiation to my mind. The only thing that will change my desire is my position now and then. My position shall shape my perspective and hence my wish. At present when I am away from the place I have a wider perspective, I am able to see the complete picture of that place. When I see the complete picture I find beauty; the petty flaws are not visible to me because of the distance and in fact before the whole picture those are trivial.  But when I will be near to the much-desired place it will no longer be possible for me to see the whole picture at once as my perspective shall turn narrower. I will only be able to see fragments; the trivial and once petty things shall appear more manifest and magnified. This is so as my eyes cannot contain the whole picture, they can only hold the parts or pieces now and the beauty is now lost.

When I shall leave that place, when I’ll be far again, my perspective shall widen and I’ll be able to see what I failed to see when I was close.

The same goes with our relationships with people. At inception of the relationship I see a nice person as a whole; I am at that time blind to his/her minor flaws because those are too trivial to notice before the whole goodness in him/her. But as the relationship progresses we get close; our perspectives get narrower; and we fail to notice an essentially good person as our mind is stuck with the petty flaws, the trivial matters due to our narrowed perspective. And once when we shall lose that person; when again we shall be far from him/her we will be able to find what we have lost.