Songkran: A Fun Time And Others More to Go Through
Author: Witcoin Miner
Keywords: #fun, #festival, #Songkran, #family, #relationship, #Newyear, #watersplash, #temple, #Buddhist, #culture, #breakup, #IT
Length: 1423 words
Date: 1st April 2020
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With these timely advices to help us feel a little more grounded and benefit from staying on top of things, not freaking out, we can each mindfully do what we can to celebrate this year’s Songkran holiday in a safe and meaningful way because no one wants to miss this most popular festival that everyone is looking forwards to. Songkran marks the beginning of the new lunar year and the advent of the summer season. Typically it starts around early to mid-April, when everyone packs their luggage and heads to the best places in the country. Some cities set off celebrating this festival a few days before others. The celebrations then continue for three to five days depending on the location.
Songkran is a special time for Buddhist Thais to do merit at the temple with their family. Meritorious deeds include offering food to the monks in the morning, listening to Buddhist teachings, donating money and volunteering at the temple. To release fish and birds is a common practice over Songkran. It is about freeing life. At the same time it is a symbol of letting go of illness and misfortune.
It is also such a special occasion for Thai families that April 14th is considered 'Family Day'. These days, the children often study and work away from home, yet Songkran brings everyone together and strengthens the family ties. Different generations, from grandparents to great grandchildren, gather and do activities together. They often hang out, eat and go on excursions. The fun part of Songkran, that both kids and young adults look forward to, is the water splashing which symbolizes a fresh start of the New Year and a wish for the year filled with blessings.
However, things always have two sides: pros- and cons-; to be more realistic, not every family at this Songkran season is in perfect mood to celebrate the ‘Family Day’; there are those in the middle of ups and downs in life, particularly in relationships or marriage. If it is the case, to ease off those hard and rotten feelings and pass this Songkran in an embrace of Buddhist wisdom would be such a solace.
Fundamentally, the basic principle in a relationship is ‘We share’, sharing wisdom, knowledge, and allowing ‘two persons’ being mirror to one another and respect each other. But the problem is about the human’s tendency which likes to see what they want to see; consequently they lose the basic balance of the selfless, egoless teaching, and become selfish, ego-centered, or even ego-maniacal. Often people forget that, in relationship with another, even though there is a common bond, there are also two individual mind streams involved. So it is essential that the two persons must know that the other acts out of habit pattern and no one can be forcibly changed from the outside.
Ultimately, when a relationship has become truly unhealthy, it may be time to leave and acknowledge it is over. Even though Buddhism seems to teach that the couple should keep trying through all relationship challenges no matter what, there is a point at which they can say the relationship is over. Then it is not about failing to try hard enough; it is just that the experience of pleasure and pain, love and hurt, peace and conflict has tipped out of balance for too long. In this circumstance, loving-kindness, is essentially about protection—protecting oneself and each other from inner and outer harm. Keeping this in mind, it helps making decisions about what may ultimately serve oneself and others, best. And remember that no one can tell when it is time to leave a relationship, so this is where the practice of mindfulness and loving kindness can be the best guide. Leaving a relationship or breaking a marriage may seem like an escape or failure, but it can be the best choice for everyone too.
The suffering experienced from the breakup of the relationship does not stop at turning one’s back on the other and walking away. Be prepared and strong! The challenge to face in the aftermath is also difficult; it is not only about trying to get over the painful heartache as most people know by keeping on the move: travelling can help while trying to welcome the difficult moments with ease, and once, something inside has been transformed, life can be full of possibilities again, there are still more. The next challenge to face in the present overwhelming IT era is that social media can make breakups worse. In comparison to offline when breakups can range from awkward to awful, inspiring a gamut of emotions for former partners and people in their networks, typically these feelings fade with time and distance as ex-partners grow apart emotionally and physically.
In social media era, online can make grieving the end of the relationship even more difficult; many people unfriend, unfollow and even block their ex-partners to gain some sense of control and erase any reminder of their ex-loves. However, even if unfollow, unfriend and block the ex-partner, social media platforms are very likely to serve as reminders of the past relationship due to their algorithms, for example, on ‘this Day’ or ‘Memories’, a place where pictures or interactions with posts are shown again as what happening ‘a year ago today’ or ‘five years ago today’.
The real problem with the algorithms on social media platforms is that these systems do not understand the social context of the data they are processing. The unpredictable outcomes of these algorithms can cause extremely upsetting experiences for social media users. The algorithm is made to simply show users ‘a friend of a friend’ in the ‘mutual friends’ section, not knowing that this ‘friend of a friend’ just happens to be their ex-boyfriend or girlfriend’s new partner.
To solve this undesirable social media encounter, human-centered approaches to algorithms could help. As the work of content curation on social media continues to shift from people to algorithms, understanding how people experience what these algorithms make visible is critical to the design of human-centered systems, especially when the results are upsetting or harmful.
Apart from being a ‘Family Day’, Songkran contains another significance: it is also an occasion for family members and peers re-union; definitely people have got a lot of catching up to do at this time, yet it is inessentially always giving the companion joy. In gathering, there has been complicated for some when listening from peers or other relatives describing how one of their children has gotten a Fulbright scholarship or been elected mayor as it makes them feel they wish they had that kind of parental pride. Instead, if they can think that how lovely these people are doing such wonderful things and that their friends or relatives are proud. If they can think it that way, they feel better; rejoicing in the success of other is the wisest course.
There is also a common scenario in the family if learning from home-coming children that they are struggling in their living condition, parents cannot help feeling dismay, even though their children have matured, and though the parents’ expectations are more realistically aligned with their children’s capacities and challenges. Conversely, if the children are succeeding, they are pleased and happy because pride and chagrin seem to be built into the parent-child relationship.
Another extreme case in time of family reunion is possibly what has happened in this family whose son is a Buddhist monk, every time he sees his non-Buddhist family members, he ends up hurt and frustrated because no matter what he says his parents believe Buddhism is a weird fringe religion. Eventually, he realizes he cannot make anyone believe anything if they do not want to; he therefore changes how he responds to his family’s criticism by considering making Buddhism part of his practice not to initiate conversation about it with his family. And, neither, he lets them overpower him nor makes them just like him. Their disappointment about his life path will lose its grip on their mind when they can shake loose delusive expectations about him. Moreover, everyone not only has needs but also individual habitual Kammic habits that no one can change. Buddhism teaches that we cannot change someone’s Kamma; not even the Buddha can do that.
Lastly, Songkran comes and goes every year, no matter what type of family we have: happy family, warmth-hearted family, loveless family, large family, small family, single-mom or singled-dad family, same-sex marriage family, interracial family, etc., we all can make this Songkran a happy festival amid the panic of the COVID-19 pandemic, if we wisely work our way through.
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