We play different roles in our personal and professional lives. At home, we play the roles of parents, children, siblings , cousins or relatives. At the workplace, we are employee, manager, colleague, customer or supplier in different roles.

We inherit some roles while others are imposed on us by virtue of position or time. Either way, our roles keep changing over time. Let us examine the roles we play in our personal lives and how it changes over time.

We are born as children in a family and then become siblings when we have brothers or sisters. We then get married and have spouse and also have our own children thereafter. As we become parents, we become mother or father and so the chain continues.

Similarly, we join an organisation as an employee and then become a colleague, boss, supplier or customer to another function. Each of these roles are by virtue of the position we hold or by virtue of time and changes which happen over time due to promotions, transfer, attrition etc.

Let us first try to understand how role conflicts occur in our personal lives. We as children , want all the freedom in our lives. But as we grow up and become senior members in the family , we want to boss over our younger siblings and tell them that freedom needs to be earned.

Then , as we grow as adolescents, we defy the control of our parents. When we become parents after getting married, we feel bad when our children defy our diktats.

We tend to rediscover our roles when role changes happen and we experience what we saw in others. What we thought was wrong becomes right for us and vice versa. Welcome to this new world of family.

The role conflicts in the organisation are no different. As an employee, many a time ,we feel that our bosses are peeking over our shoulders all the time and do not allow us to breathe. When we become bosses, we tend to do the same and realise why bosses always kept an eye on us. As supplier departments ,we feel the pressure of our customers and when the role reverses ,we fail to be empathetic to our suppliers.

Life is a full circle. We get back ,what we give others. We realise the value of different roles only when we experience them. Otherwise, we tend to believe that other role holders are there to disturb our life and living, and enjoy themselves.

Even in the public sphere, roles keep changing and reversing. Let us imagine a prime minister becoming a leader of the opposition and the reverse happening. As a leader of the opposition, we tend oppose everything irrespective of merit. But as Prime Minister, we want the opposition leader to support us , in all our initiatives.

Role conflicts are a part of our lives. We need to learn to experience roles and empathise with other roles to minimise such conflicts. The day we realise that our roles are transitory, we may evolve and grow as human beings. What goes around, comes around.

Let us learn to play roles and respect other roles to minimise role-conflicts in life. Our tomorrow could have been somebody’s yesterday and someone else’s today.

S Ramesh Shankar

15th February 2023

Marriage is the legal partnership between two individuals and accepted by society as a social institution. Both men and women study, grow, work and then look for partners in their lives. Some find them in their study place while others at the workplace. Parents find partners for those who are not able to find a partner for themselves.

Marriage is an equal partnership and built on mutual respect and love. It grows with age and ability to adapt to each other. Some marriages last their lifetime while others break over time ,due to lack of compatibility.

In the past ,partners stayed with each other and sacrificed their personal preferences for the larger good of the family and the children. This could have created a lot of hardship to either of the partners but they lived with these challenges. Today divorce is not a dirty word in our society and this is good. Incompatible partners are not forced to stay with one another for life ,even if they did not enjoy being with each other every day.

If we look back at marriage as a social institution ,especially in India, we realise that it has been a binding factor in the family. If we leave out those incompatible ones, who sacrificed their lives for their children’ sake, it has by and large been the glue ,between partners.

I sometimes wonder how some marriages last a life time and not others. If I look at my own marriage, I realise it has to be based on mutual trust and respect. We come from different families, social and academic backgrounds. It is our ability to learn and adapt which makes a marriage click.

Conflicts in marriage are an integral part. We start with a honey moon phase when everything looks hunky dory. Then as the family expands ,children arrive and responsibilities increase, there is bound to be difference of opinions and conflicts between all partners. It is not presence of conflicts which worry me , but the lack of patience and adaptability to deal with these conflicts.

In my view, it is better to separate and lead peaceful and happy lives rather than keep fighting every day and make life miserable for self and others ,in the process. Sometimes the flimsy reasons for divorce make me believe that we need marriage counsellors and family counsellors like in the west ,since joint families and seniors in the family do not play this role of mediation any more.

Family as an institution has already degenerated and in the future, marriage as a social institution ,may not exist in the current form. Over the last decade I have seen that one in three marriages that I have attended ,has failed. This is a scary statistic and I am not proud of it.

We have to prepare ourselves to live in a society where family and marriage are no longer sacrosanct social institutions. We may get new types of partnerships and also new types of families ,which may be different than the past definitions ,we are familiar with.

May be time to redefine “marriage” as a social institution and get ready to live in this new world.

S Ramesh Shankar

28th May 2022