Pleasant tributes and occasional well-merited words of praise add warmth and pleasure in human relations. The eternal kural says: The use of harsh words in the place of sweet ones is like plucking an unripe fruit when a fully ripe one available. Oliver Wendell Holmes description of friendship “as the pleasing game of interchanging praise” has contextual relevance in marital relations too.
A well informed, reasonably educated and highly cultured housewife turns the noisy rattle of married life into pleasant music. Her sweet words, to quote a Biblical proverb will serve as a ‘honeycomb’ and provide “music to the soul” and “health to the bones”. The same line of reasoning also holds good for the husband who must be always alert to understand the emotional side of his life partner and say consoling words. This will help release the pent-up feelings of the better-half.
There is thus a reasoned case of moderate flattery in family life. While the necessary condition for successful marriage is that the husband must continuously love his wife and have a better understanding, the sufficient condition is that continually he must tell her that he loves her. The institution of marriage must enable human beings to find emotional fulfillment and ultimately discover their own real self. Under the circumstances, the marriage becomes a soul stirring experience.
A husband (or wife) who exercises utmost restraint in the face of provocative statements from his life partner (husband) and is prudent enough to say pleasant words, obtain optimum satisfaction and buy domestic peace at home which in turn generates beneficial externalities to the family members and the society at large. Flattery, blended with a sense of humour adds colour and festivity to the insipid and meaningless life and provides lift from time to time.
But alas, the institution of marriage has evolved into a complex mechanism in this sophisticated, dehumanized age, leading to inexplicable tension and irreparable frictions. Prejudices and suspicions, inflated ego and arrogance continually infiltrate into the family and cause havoc; fortunately they are negotiated successfully by the wisdom of grown-up children. The tired and experienced couple also begin to fully realize that they must behave like coalition governments and establish a semblance of unity with a minimum understanding-more like a common programme that they must live together to see the children get settled in life.
Mark Twain once said that he could live on praise for two months. While there is a rationale behind well merited words of praise in both personal relations and social contacts, the blatant abuse of it (or misuse of it) has reached an alarming proportion in Legislative Assembly corridors and academic institutions. Those who conduct an exhibition in the art of flattery by their seemingly polite outward behavior with all the malice in the heart, shallowness and crookedness in the mind, have no sense of shame, no moral fibre to cloth their physical frame with and no social commitment to advance except their own personal aggrandizement.
With the art of flattery fully perfected, aided and abetted by the influence of affluence, their minds work in a typical criminal fashion to the economic detriment and social ills of the society. The stock phrases such as Prolific writer, ardent scientist/ economist, passionate lover of nature, brilliant orator, a committed patriot or democrat are lavishly showered on people in academic and literary meetings, conference and bogus seminars to obtain some favours and win some titles or designations. This rampant intellectual prostitution indulged in by some unscrupulous, usurious, teacher-politicians, spoil the work environment and degrade the standards of education and research so much so that even very ordinary and worthless books are extolled to the skies-by writers of introductions/forewords.
A well informed, reasonably educated and highly cultured housewife turns the noisy rattle of married life into pleasant music. Her sweet words, to quote a Biblical proverb will serve as a ‘honeycomb’ and provide “music to the soul” and “health to the bones”. The same line of reasoning also holds good for the husband who must be always alert to understand the emotional side of his life partner and say consoling words. This will help release the pent-up feelings of the better-half.
There is thus a reasoned case of moderate flattery in family life. While the necessary condition for successful marriage is that the husband must continuously love his wife and have a better understanding, the sufficient condition is that continually he must tell her that he loves her. The institution of marriage must enable human beings to find emotional fulfillment and ultimately discover their own real self. Under the circumstances, the marriage becomes a soul stirring experience.
A husband (or wife) who exercises utmost restraint in the face of provocative statements from his life partner (husband) and is prudent enough to say pleasant words, obtain optimum satisfaction and buy domestic peace at home which in turn generates beneficial externalities to the family members and the society at large. Flattery, blended with a sense of humour adds colour and festivity to the insipid and meaningless life and provides lift from time to time.
But alas, the institution of marriage has evolved into a complex mechanism in this sophisticated, dehumanized age, leading to inexplicable tension and irreparable frictions. Prejudices and suspicions, inflated ego and arrogance continually infiltrate into the family and cause havoc; fortunately they are negotiated successfully by the wisdom of grown-up children. The tired and experienced couple also begin to fully realize that they must behave like coalition governments and establish a semblance of unity with a minimum understanding-more like a common programme that they must live together to see the children get settled in life.
Mark Twain once said that he could live on praise for two months. While there is a rationale behind well merited words of praise in both personal relations and social contacts, the blatant abuse of it (or misuse of it) has reached an alarming proportion in Legislative Assembly corridors and academic institutions. Those who conduct an exhibition in the art of flattery by their seemingly polite outward behavior with all the malice in the heart, shallowness and crookedness in the mind, have no sense of shame, no moral fibre to cloth their physical frame with and no social commitment to advance except their own personal aggrandizement.
With the art of flattery fully perfected, aided and abetted by the influence of affluence, their minds work in a typical criminal fashion to the economic detriment and social ills of the society. The stock phrases such as Prolific writer, ardent scientist/ economist, passionate lover of nature, brilliant orator, a committed patriot or democrat are lavishly showered on people in academic and literary meetings, conference and bogus seminars to obtain some favours and win some titles or designations. This rampant intellectual prostitution indulged in by some unscrupulous, usurious, teacher-politicians, spoil the work environment and degrade the standards of education and research so much so that even very ordinary and worthless books are extolled to the skies-by writers of introductions/forewords.
No comments:
Post a Comment