Flangiprop

A flange has been defined as a projecting flat rim, a collar or a rib on an object which serves the purpose of strengthening the object, holding it in place or enable attaching it to another object.

Now why in God’s name did I have to define something as obscure as a flange on my blog which is anything but engineering related in the first place? Read on and you will find out.

It goes without saying that love, affection, fondness, warmth, intimacy, endearment, by whatever term this particular emotion is known is what makes the world go round, it is what enables all of us to build relationships with fellow human beings and exist as a coherent society. Love is the foundation on which all our personal relationships are built upon, it is the life blood of all our interactions with our families and ‘loved ones’ (for lack of a better word).

It therefore follows that using the analogy that if life were compared to a running train, then love would be the wheels of this particular train, the foundation on which the train rests and keeps chugging along the rails. And just as any train wheel requires flanges to ensure that the wheels remain on track and don’t derail, similarly every love requires communication as the flange to ensure that our lives remain on track.

We have all heard of, and I am sure even know more than a few people in our lives who have suffered quite a bit due to lack of communication and even worse due to being over-communicative. I am sure that the battle-hardened war veterans among the readers are quietly smiling and nodding their heads when I say that all of us at some point of time in our lives have borne the consequences of good or bad communication skills having a major impact in our lives.

One of the things that most of us make the mistake of doing is to take the people we love for granted. After the initial euphoria of the first few days in the relationship, when all parties involved are getting to know each other and are therefore extremely careful about what is being told and communicated, almost all relationships enter into a ‘steady state’. This is the stage when each party in the relationship is comfortable enough with the other that most of the time; he/she is able to predict the reaction, reply or next moves of the other party. While this is a good sign and means that the parties understand each other, this ‘comfort’ is inherently fraught with a lot of risk.

The fact remains that as humans, we are all extremely emotional creatures driven by our moods. If I am in a bad, surly mood, then even the best of news would probably not be greeted with a smile. In such moods, even simple harmless questions may sound like deep rooted suspicions against my intentions. At the other end of the spectrum, if I am in a happy-go-lucky mood, then even the worst of news will be treated with disdain and events which would require urgent attention also might go unnoticed for long. That is the sad but true nature of our mood swings. And it therefore follows that communication at such times plays an extremely pivotal role in the well-being or otherwise of relationships.

Like I mentioned before it is the flangiprop, the prop which ensures that the message and the medium with which it is delivered has the appropriate impact irrespective of the mood of the listener or the reader of the same. I mean, despite various scientific experiments in the field of telepathy and intuition, the fact remains that as of today, the only effective means for humans to get their message across to others is to talk to each other or to write to each other. It therefore follows that all of us have to be crystal clear when communicating with each other, more so in relationships that really matter to us, as the stakes are a lot higher and more valuable in such cases.

So let us all take some time out, think clearly about what we want to say to our loved ones and more importantly how we want to say the same, for you never know that might just be the difference between getting a nice red Thai curry for lunch or some burnt karela ka sabji (burnt bitter gourd fry) for dinner. Let us all work on our flangiprop to ensure our lives are not beset with unnecessary petty issues.

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This post is written for WordPress Daily Prompts : 365 Writing Prompts where the idea is to publish at least one post a day based on the prompts provided.

Today’s prompt was “Invent a definition for the word flangiprop and use the word in the prompt”.

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(All images used in this post were sourced from Google Image search)