We are always upgrading our skills. When we are born we know how to cry and how to sleep. We feel hungry and we cry, then someone feeds us and we sleep. As the months go by we learn to recognize faces and know who is useful to us. How we respond to them depends on how they respond to us. Some of those learnings we abandon as they are no more useful to us, some we keep as they help us on our onward march towards fulfilling our potential - though we are not always very accomplished in making those choices.

When Microsoft introduced the Vista, I changed over as it seemed fashionable to have the latest operating system on my new laptop. However, I did not find much use for the same as I was not conversant with the system. It resulted in many crashes, frustrations and sometimes anger. As time went by, I realized that the only way I could handle the new Vista OS was by upgrading my relationship with the Vista. So I took some training, read some manuals, did some practice and got to learn all the finer details about the program. What would have happened if I had waited for the Vista to get used to me? What if I had said that I need to wait till MS fixes the Vista until it is completely user friendly? I would have had to either go back to my old ways (the XP) or lost the use of my laptop.

Transitions come in our relationships as they come in our material and physical life. The same way that we have to master the environment when our physical environment changes or our material environment changes, we also have to change when there are transitions in our lives due to changes in relationship dynamics. How often, do we lose the opportunity to upgrade our relationships, because we silently plead for change in the other to respond to our needs? To quote, "Happiness is not getting what we want; it is appreciating what we have". How often, do we say to ourselves, I am going to upgrade myself so that I can meet the expectation of the other, rather than telling the other to upgrade to meet my expectations? As with the MS Vista we have to put in the time and energy to upgrade our relationship, if we wish them to be meaningful.

Just think back to the days of your primary education. I still remember when our son Srujan at the age of four wrote the numerals 1 to 21 and then the first 2 of 22, and got stuck for three days on how to write the second 2 of 22. It took immense patience, frustration, some anger and shouting - for three days before he could unlock his mind to realize that the second 2 is the same as the first 2 in 22. Yet, when he got married at 22, he had no help at hand and had to put all his 2's together to make his own 22's, and I guess he has to do this all his life - otherwise he runs the risk of getting stuck at 22. What I am getting at is, we take years to learn the basics in school and yet we falter at every major step. With each failure