Observing the Dyadic Relation

The way to destroy my family and home is to insist on a many-to-many network, because that is a group view that supersedes the evolution of individual relationships.  The meaning of dyad is simply two of something and it is a word that I have come to use in order to view and understand a relationship type which is not what we tend to focus on.  We do not tend to focus on this relationship type because we speak the language of groups and in so doing sometimes at the expense of being blind to relationship insights at the the individual to individual level.

A mother and son dyad may seem simple enough as a relationship between a mother and a son and vice-versa.  Yet that simply qualifies as a relationship.   Why I utilize the term "dyad" is because it helps me express multiple types of relationship between two people.  When I see my mother I do not see just a person who is my mother but a person who is a person in her own right.  It is that second view which we do not often think about.   My own kids may see me as dad, but they can also see me as Manjit.  The dyad is not the relationship it is the diversity.

That is what defines the dyad as an individual view and not a group view.  Each dyad is an individual relationship and those that can see the layers that exist in a relationship are able to see a greater view of relationship, one far more nuanced than I am son, she is my mother.  The group tends to make us generalize the relationship rather than specialize the relationship - when I started to see the person my mother is as an individual person, I began to see and appreciate facets about her life that do not normally come into view - for the simple reason that we don't see the individual, we see only the mother.

A big part of the success of our home has been our collective ability to keep the outside world out of our home and so privacy and our family business is not something that we share.  Observing the dyad simply brings the individual level of relationship and make that more alive, but it does not lessen or remove the need for group level relationships that form the home.  In that case if Bollywood made a movie about our home, it probably will be highly moral and values film like "Hum Saath Saath Hain" - and while we have the morals and values, we also have a tonne of real life and whether it is Hollywood or Bollywood - movies represent the fantasy.

When the dyad is weak, the family is kept together not by a sense of meaning but by control and control without relationship value is a horrible home.   The resilience we have as a family did not arise because we were the perfect family but because we don't tend to keep things locked within and we don't let the opinion of people who have no idea who we are, impose their will on us.  The road to dysfunction can become paved in concrete, rather than liberated by resilience. 

A healthy home is not one which is practicing dogma but actually do the job of living together.  What are cracks in our home do not become canyons, they become resilience.  The reason people are averse to conflict is because they have been exposed to brutality and not living.  All families have tough moments but it is how those moments strengthen a home that is the difference - and here is where in the reforming the network of dyads work to strengthen things.

It is the diversity we are blessed with and in 90% of the time, every week is a party night in our home because it is very much active and alive - and so reflective moments like this are special for me because anyone visiting us will soon notice just how noisy our home is - this is good noise, it is the network of dyadic relations sparking and simmering in different parts of the home or together as a group. 

Outside the home I might be delivered an idea such as "emotional intelligence" and this idea is often built up of what people don't want - and so expresses itself as good thing that counters whatever people view does not work with the world.  The point is that if the dyadic relationships are based on trying to fill in the cracks, there is no real evolution because then all the sum of those relationships are focused on becoming experts on what does not work - and that leads to the lightning and thunder of finger pointing.   We focus on the practical and that which does work.  When Daniel Goleman saw an Atlantic article that began looking at perverse ways EI or EQ was actually being used, he immediately wrote a response 3 days later to acknowledge that article but try to preserve the reputation and multi-million dollar industry that is emotional intelligence.  There is no textbook answer to how a family may emerge, this is what life is.

Krishnamurti questioned what brings disorder in relationships and that reinforces the forces of the group.  We must understand existence as a group because we are members of society but we have no guarantee's that the home we exist in can survive all that life throws at it, without it further damaging itself with confusions and distress within.  My exploration of the dyadic is simply me trying to figure out why our home works so well and has grown from strength to strength and from there I have discovered at a personal level, multiple meanings of family and home - that we can create dyads outside our private home - that themselves are homes of social existence, homes of work and homes of play.  In not having an answer that too is diversity, and the dyad is not an answer, it is simply an organization, a network, a practice that is the sum of individual relationships, not as political parties or economic necessity, but the nature of being - one that I observe like everyone else as a group, but also the dyadic relationship.

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