I told you already that Yashendu started towards the Himalayas with his travelling group. They spent the day in Rishikesh yesterday and are now on the way to Gangotri, the source town of the river Ganges. We are having a good time at the Ashram with our friends who stayed. When I told them that the Himalaya retreat group had arrived safely in Rishikesh, Andrea asked me whether we would talk to Yashendu every day while he was gone. I told her that we were not as formal that he would have to call us every day. We are just more informal with each other.
I told her that we had actually talked several times since Yashendu was gone and that it would probably be like this until he would be back. Those phone calls were however not scheduled reports that he gave us or we gave him about the situations or events. It was more calls like ‘Yashendu, do you know where this or that is?’ and similar questions. Of course he would then also tell where they were and what they had done but if there is a day when we will not be in touch, it will also be okay. I am not waiting for his phone call and he has no feeling that he needed to report what is going on.
In our family we are simply not formal with each other. I believe when you are close, it is not necessary anymore to be formal. You should actually not be formal with those whom you love and with whom you are close.
If you follow formalities, you stick to a protocol. You have to do or say certain things at certain times, otherwise you would be impolite. This protocol thus teaches people to act just like machines. It is like a fixed setting and they don’t use their own feelings to decide what they should do next or what they should say, they follow the formalities.
In my opinion there has to be the possibility to drop those formalities in order to allow a relation to get strong, in order to let feelings into your relation. If you only follow the same protocol for everyone, you cannot make a closer relation with those whom you consider friends. Give yourself the permission to be informal with friends or those with whom you feel you could get closer without formalities.
So many people simply get stuck in formalities of what they should do. When someone comes over you have to offer something to drink and something to eat. If the person has to ask for it first, you were a bad host. You have to shake hands, say good morning, thank you and bless you, you have to make an appointment for when you can meet and you just need to take care with everything you say. If someone wants to follow this all, he is just busy worrying about all those things and whether he did them right. There will really be no chance to just be himself, to express his emotions freely and to show the other one who he is behind all the formal things he has to say and do.
Among friends, this is not anymore necessary. You know the other one completely and that is why you can just come by, meet without an appointment, borrow things from each other or hang out, doing different things but still being together. You get closer, you know each other better and you don’t have to worry you would offend the other one by forgetting a formality.
If someone has no wish to get close, he will keep formalities active in his relation to you. He won’t allow closeness to happen. When there are no formalities necessary anymore, you know that it is a close friendship and love.
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This is so very true. How can people be your true friend or love if they do not know the real you because you are hiding behind all these formalities? When you firt meet someone it is polite to follow these ‘rules’ but if someone is truly going to be close to you then you must allow yourself to be natural and do and say without thinking and worrying first.