MASTERY OF RELATIONSHIPS AS A GOAL OF SPIRITUAL AND INTELLECTUAL UPBRINGING

MASTERY OF RELATIONSHIPS AS A GOAL OF SPIRITUAL AND INTELLECTUAL UPBRINGING

10.34142//2708-4809.SIUTY.2022.32

The article deals with the issue of relationships as a subject of spiritual and intellectual upbringing: their importance in human life, main types, stages of development and rules of formation. The necessity of teaching these issues through a separate subject of the school curriculum for the purposeful preparation of young people for independent life is shown.
Keywords: upbringing, relationships, feelings, friendship, love.

Khvostychenko O. M.
Candidate of Military Sciences, Associate Professor,
World Scientific Noosphere-Ontological Society, Kharkiv, Ukraine

Relationships are the most valuable thing in the world of people. Communication is an integral, very important part of life and it should bring joy and happiness. Therefore, relationships should not be left to their own devices and remain a good wish. For relationships to be truly stable, sincere, and inspiring, people need to pay considerable attention to them.

Surveys show that relationships are one of the most valuable areas of life, yet statistics show that about 80% of people feel lonely, most domestic crimes occur between close people, and most marriages end within the first year. Thus, there is a contradiction between what is desired and what is real [1].

The purpose of the article is to analyze the content of different types of relationships between people and their environment based on the research conducted, and to provide initial recommendations on the rules for their formation and further development in the education system.

Usually, relationships are formed by themselves during communication at the place of residence, study, and work. When building relationships, children rely on the example of their parents and other authorities. A person sees how others communicate with each other and tries to copy and adopt what they like. However, the relationships that surround a person are not always positive and worthy of their attention, let alone copying. Even the relationship between parents can be unexemplary, because no one has purposefully taught them how to build relationships either. But in conditions where there are no or few better examples, people copy what they see. This significantly affects the rest of their lives. After all, the ability to build a personal life, make friends, get an interesting and promising job, and solve a lot of everyday issues depends on how well a person knows how to communicate. Blocking complexes, false attitudes and beliefs acquired in childhood lead to the fact that a person misses many opportunities that arise in life. Hence the dissatisfaction of most people with what is happening in their relationships. They do not understand how to purposefully change themselves for the better for better relationships. Thus, relationships can be both the main source of joy and happiness and the cause of great suffering if they are not purposefully paid due attention to and left to their own devices [2]. One of the main reasons is the lack of education.

The modern education system does not allocate time in educational programs for learning to build relationships; there is no universally recognized system of rules, scientific disciplines, or government programs that would set the formation of decent relationships as a goal, and this is what is lacking [3]. Only sometimes this issue is somehow resolved at the level of private initiative, the activities of innovators. A purposeful study of this area and the formation of the necessary beliefs, qualities, and skills can give a person better results in life. Therefore, in the system of spiritual and intellectual education and training, considerable attention should be paid to the issues of relationships [3].

Let us consider the main areas. First of all, a person should be given an understanding of the importance of relationships, their role in his or her life, and the fact that relationships can and should be learned. Students should have a goal – to form relationships that would warm the heart, inspire, enhance the joy of life, and increase the effectiveness of their work. The student must be inspired by the goal of achieving the best relationships that people can have. Step by step, the teacher must form spiritual relationships, constantly strengthen, deepen, and awaken the best feelings: deep respect, sincere gratitude, true loyalty and reliability, friendship, and inspiring love. The result should be the spread of the highest ethics among people around us, the embodiment of human dignity and nobility without lies and falsehoods, deception and betrayal [4].

Relationships permeate all aspects of life: personal life (family, etc.) and the environment (friends, acquaintances, educational, labor, creative teams), determine the state (joy or suffering), stability in society and the effectiveness of solving life problems (help, support from other people). Ideally, relationships should be based on feelings – with loved ones (the biggest component of happiness), and on high ethics, goodwill and mutual reinforcement – with others.

Relationships develop most successfully among people who are approximately equal in terms of spiritual development. Sometimes relationships become unbearable, bring only negativity, suffering, pain, and deadlock because of a large spiritual gap when people cannot understand each other. One must be able to end such relationships in a timely manner, at least temporarily.

Strong spiritual relationships do not arise spontaneously. They are the result of mutual purposeful work in stages of growth [2]:

Stage I. Comfortable pastime: common themes, friendliness, ethics, inadmissibility of aggression in any form, and other negativity. The main thing is that it is interesting, comfortable, and makes sense to develop the relationship further.
Stage II. Mutual assistance, common affairs: coming to the rescue, asking for help, refusing to help (if the request exceeds the conditions), then developing the relationship, limiting or terminating the relationship.
Stage III. Understanding: overcoming conflicts, resolving contradictions, the ability to engage in dialogue and find compromise solutions, self-control – when positive experience is accumulated and becomes the norm, you can take the next step – to reveal feelings.

Stage IV. Development of feelings: joint growth based on shared beliefs, values, and plans.

Developing relationships in stages, without getting ahead of ourselves, is a guarantee of developing deep relationships without disappointment and heartache because there is time to check the seriousness of intentions, readiness to contribute to the development of relationships through specific actions, deeds, etc. As long as there are problems, it makes no sense to move to the next stage. Let’s look at the characteristics of the main types of relationships.

Personal life – the warmth of loving hearts, care, tenderness, intimacy, emotional comfort, home comfort, etc., the possibility of joint development and activities, the basis for creating a family (developing feelings for life, raising children). The most important things for building a happy personal life are reliability and loyalty, spiritual wealth of loving souls, mutual personal growth, common environment – common friends, common traditions. The more common interests there are and the earlier they are identified, the faster the relationship develops and the stronger the feelings between people.

Relationships with children. Every normal person sincerely wishes their children all the best – that they are healthy, beautiful, strong, loved, happy, and reach the highest heights in life. But despite wishing their children well, parents are usually unprepared for this. They have not been taught this either at school or at university, and all they can do is copy their parents. To make wishes come true, you need:
First, a personal example, the most effective educational tool instead of the most clever lectures. What parents have achieved in their lives, how they behave at home and in public, how they react to different situations, what they do for their family and children is the most important thing for a child, and they will copy it in their lives.
Secondly, to create an environment and conditions for the child to learn communication skills, grow and develop as a person, and get impressions of life.
Thirdly, learning roles. It is important that the child learns all the key roles in turn, so to speak, and lives them. We distinguish roles such as: subordination, where he or she must accept and follow orders; independence, where he or she makes decisions and is responsible for them; desirability, where he or she can ask for whatever he or she wants and get what is possible. In other words, a child should be able to obey, negotiate, and give orders in different conditions and opportunities.
Fourthly, a positive attitude – to inspire faith in oneself, to support (“You can do it”, “You will succeed”, “You are strong, you can achieve more”).
Fifth, a combination of rewards and punishment. Encourage any good deeds and successes (mostly morally). At the same time, if a child is guilty, he or she should be punished. You need to be able to love, but not “fall in love,” and you need to be able to punish. The child must feel that he or she must be responsible for all actions, and then there is a chance that he or she will grow up to be a truly decent person.

Relationships with parents. The other side of the parent-child relationship is the attitude of children toward their parents. Here, too, the parental example for children is of paramount importance, in particular the attitude towards grandparents. Treat your parents the way you want your children to treat you. When they grow up, they will copy your filial love, realize it in the traditions of the family, etc., and not follow your moral guidance.

Friends. In friendships, the strength of the relationship depends on whether people have common interests, how many of them they have, and how important they are.

Friends are people who are able to do everything necessary for each other: to increase joy; to make sure that nothing overshadows the other; to save the other from any disaster, even at the risk of their lives.

Friendship does not happen all of a sudden. It goes from a pleasant pastime to unconditional loyalty. To do this, you need to invest time, words, deeds, and personal attitude (how much a person values friendship) in the relationship. One of the functions of friendship, in addition to the mutual joy of communication and enjoyment of feelings, is to teach a person to give energy, attention, care, help, strength and means to a previously stranger. This cures selfishness.

Workplace relationships must become the basis for success, regardless of the field of activity, or they will cause the collapse of the business. The bottom line is to fulfill the basic rules of relationships in roles: superior, equal, inferior. If these roles are maintained, a large list of problems is removed. The ideal is teamwork.

Team. An effective team is essential for the success of any business. A team is distinguished from an ordinary labor collective by the maximum interest of everyone in the overall success and the focus of all components, especially relationships, on this unity. It is quite difficult to find such a team. It is much more realistic to create such a team yourself. It’s not easy, and it takes a lot of effort. Almost all outstanding leaders believe that they have achieved their success primarily thanks to their teams. The main indicator of a team’s quality (which encompasses many factors) is its unity.

We know the familiar ones: comfortable pastime (mutual understanding, signs of attention), enhanced self-realization (trust, teamwork, help), and position in society (sustainability, problem solving).

All of these issues should be the subject of detailed study in the school curriculum. The disclosure of the basics of relationships and their basic rules, reinforced by appropriate trainings and the atmosphere in the educational team, will fully prepare the student for a decent independent life.

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