Our Country Needs Its Youth To Have A Mind

Q. I am going through a very painful situation currently.  I love a girl and we were together for two years.  But she left me for another guy.  I am heartbroken.  Now, I want to die.  She is my first love and I can't imagine living without her:  What can I do Sir?  Please help me....

A.  I understand and respect your feelings.  I agree that it can be painful, but I also want you to make the right choices.  I'm happy that you wrote to me.  My dear, in life, many a times, things do not work out.  It has happened to me.  It has happened to everyone.  There are times when someone may find comfort with someone else and it could have been you.  I agree you will feel low and bad and unhappy, but you are young and there is a lot more you can do.  I also want you to acknowledge and respect her decision and let her go.  You have your parents, your friends.  You need to work hard, earn money, change your mindset.  Our country needs its youth to have a mind, to be decision makers, to be progressive, happy, respectful and these things in the process are only going to benefit you.  Feel bad about it but don't let it be the only thing you do.  Time heals and it goes for all.  Being strong, doing the right thing is important.

Q.  I am 20 years old.  I am in a relationship with a guy who is from different caste.  Our families will not accept our relationship.  We are aware that we cannot marry, still we talk for long hours.  We can't even elope and get married because for my partner his parents come first.  I cry every time I think about the time I think about the time we are going to break up.

A.  Well, I'm sorry about your dilemma and I'm sorry that you feel low.  Relationships can be the best thing, that happen to us.  However, it's important to ask yourself questions that set your priorities right.  In this world full of insecurity and complexities, both of you can make things easier by just asking your parents and explaining to them how you feel.  If you think that they are not going to agree anyway and he does want to respect his parent's wishes, the right thing and healthy thing to do would be to change your equation - be friends.  It will be tough.  However, when one gets married it's important to have a healthy equation even with your own family.  We bring children into the world and have an added responsibility to give them warmth, love, security and make good human being out of them.  So when you think of being married and making a family, if you understand the dynamics of being healthy emotionally and secure in the choices you make, you will make it easier on children.

              Seeing the current scenario, I can't help but realise that healthy relationships, happiness, security and love is what we need to give our children and teach them to be good human beings....  ANUPAM KHER, The renowned action....

How To Tackle The Green - Eyed Monster _ MANI SHANKAR

I am all J over the way my ex-GF is making out with another guy and burning up with rage for weeks.  Can't think of anything else.  Help._ A teenager.

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I am going to make a scalpel out of my pen and harsh as it may seem, do a surgical incision.  J kills.  Yup.  But you know that already and you seem to want exactly that - to be drowned in such stupor that you begin to die slowly inside.  You get so obsessed that you secretly want all vestiges of compassion and camaraderie to get snuffed out of existence.  As emotions go jealously is among the more jealous of emotions.  It leaves no room for any other mood to exist.  Sure it satisfies you in certain obscure ways, just as a cigarette satisfies the smoker - in some obscure way.

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Ask a smoker exactly what pleasure he derives and he will be at a loss to explain - same with jealousy.  You can't explain why at every moment your mind drifts towards morbid fantasies but you sure do get a grim satisfaction from the addiction.  Make no mistake, once it takes it grip like a python coiling around a rat - it suffocates the life breath of goodness and smothers you to a horrible heart-death.  You become a shell of a person with no warmth, no humour, no happiness left.  Are you sure you want to get cured?  Had enough?

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Then stop feeling so self-important, stop feeling you are the centre of the universe around whom everyone should revolve.  Change the fulcrum of your existence.  Rise into a protecting nurturing wisdom.  Grant people the right to love others, to make love to others.  Grant people the right to see through you, to get fed up with you, to walk out on you.  Truly nobody is your own in this world.  Wow.  That was very harsh, yes, and I need to say it again with a smile.  Nobody is your own in this world.  Just because society said the two of you are a couple doesn't take away from the other the right to think otherwise.  Your real option is to free the other and set yourself free in the process.

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You have arrived at a crossroad and two paths lie before you.  The first is the smooth well traveled highway of jealous burning.  If you don't take the harder road of forgiveness now, someday when the juices run dry and you shrivel up inside into a brittle twig of your former self, the truth will hit you in the face.  You will understand that it was far better to have become humble, accepted your insignificance and walker away a free person than to have burnt into black toast with the raging fires of envy.

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The smart guy knows when to fume and rage and when to shrug and walk away.  The intelligent guy knows when to let pride flow into him and when to let pride flow away from him.  This soft skill of handling jealously is critical and life saving, friend.  Learn it well and live to love another day.

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"MANISHANKAR, THE AUTHOR, A DIRECTOR, HELPS THE YOUTH STRIKE A BALANCE IN THEIR RELATION SHIPS................"