While Adi is managing Tapaswi, my 45 day old son, I am writing this blogpost. First I thought I will place this post under the philosophy heading, then I felt that some serious technical readers may think its a rambling. So putting it under the "appropriate" heading.
In the Indian context, marriage is a key milestone in a person's life. Leading the life of a Grihastha is a path in itself. The aim of the Indian marriages are to keep the couple united and also work towards a higher possibility. Infact the Gurukulas of those times were sponsored by the grihasthas.
Being a management research scholar, i adopt one of the research strategies to write this blog post. I take insights from Maslow's hierarchy of needs to make my own theory of a Happy Married Life. If you are married, its never too late and if you aren't its not too early to adopt this theory in your life. :D
The Maslow's hierarchy of needs are as follows: Physiological needs, safety needs, belonging needs, esteem needs and self-actualization needs. You may look at the picture to see what each "need" actually means. I am not going in detail into each need.
While one starts married life, one needs to take care that the first few needs are met. As things settle down, the couple may start exploring higher needs in their life. Disharmony occurs when one of them operates at a certain need level and fails to climb down and up the ladder. For instance, the wife may be a detached person and interested in working for the society while the husband needs more emotional solace and refuses to let her pursue her interest. Or the husband is spiritually inclined and the wife is more concerned with mundane aspects of life. One can quote numerous examples of such disharmony. We must understand that this is a temporary phenomena and "this too shall pass" is the mantra to sail through such a phase. So for a normal family, it is best that the lower needs are met as much as possible and then the couple move to higher needs together. A relationship is not fruitful until the two of them together aspire for higher dimensions of life. The Indian tradition provides enough and more avenues for this. A complete marriage is one where most of these needs(at all levels in the hierarchy) are met for both the stakeholders.
The success of the family depends on how early they reach the higher need levels. Some families are stuck to physiological needs throughout their lifetime while some reach the self-actualization level within couple of months. There is no one formula for everyone to reach the top but its a beautiful process of discovery. One musn't miss the exploration. So how do we solve the imbalance issues? One has to just remember "None likes to be managed but everyone loves to be involved[SJV]"
While one starts married life, one needs to take care that the first few needs are met. As things settle down, the couple may start exploring higher needs in their life. Disharmony occurs when one of them operates at a certain need level and fails to climb down and up the ladder. For instance, the wife may be a detached person and interested in working for the society while the husband needs more emotional solace and refuses to let her pursue her interest. Or the husband is spiritually inclined and the wife is more concerned with mundane aspects of life. One can quote numerous examples of such disharmony. We must understand that this is a temporary phenomena and "this too shall pass" is the mantra to sail through such a phase. So for a normal family, it is best that the lower needs are met as much as possible and then the couple move to higher needs together. A relationship is not fruitful until the two of them together aspire for higher dimensions of life. The Indian tradition provides enough and more avenues for this. A complete marriage is one where most of these needs(at all levels in the hierarchy) are met for both the stakeholders. The success of the family depends on how early they reach the higher need levels. Some families are stuck to physiological needs throughout their lifetime while some reach the self-actualization level within couple of months. There is no one formula for everyone to reach the top but its a beautiful process of discovery. One musn't miss the exploration. So how do we solve the imbalance issues? One has to just remember "None likes to be managed but everyone loves to be involved[SJV]"
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