By Karmayogi

Mental relationship is conversation. Vital (emotional) relationship is being together pleasantly. Unintelligent conversation or conversation of unintelligent persons degenerates into a verbal contest. Life has many paradoxes. One of them is unpleasant characters like each other. Quarrel is one way they relate to each other. Their quarrel will not necessarily lead to a break. Actually, the more they quarrel, the closer they may come in certain instances.

When people are not brought up in cultured ways and still like each other, their trying to understand each other better is expressed as quarrel. They often develop a philosophy between themselves: ‘‘Quarrel is common between us. It has become a way of life. We must learn to live with that.'' It is not impossible for quarrelling friends or couples to give up quarrelling. Man quarrels. After the heat subsides, he takes the initiative to reconcile; the relationship is restored. It is restored without removing the cause of quarrel. At best, both try to avoid mentioning that issue. The result is that the quarrel will again surface after some time, as the seed of the quarrel is there undissolved.

It needs a certain patient understanding or humility or goodness to speak out and say, ‘‘Well, I was hasty. It was unpardonable on my part.'' This appears to be a small gesture between husband and wife or friends, but it is significant. Once this is done, quarrel of this particular description may not arise again or at least for a longer time than usual. To realise one's defects is introspection. To express it to the offending individual is cultured behaviour. In the upbringing of children, they pick up these cultured ways from the parents or are reared into culture. Quarrelling is an uncultured exhibition, but its other side is it is one person's attempt to better understand another vitally.