How about a Reality Check??

Few days back, the tagline of an article in the newspaper supplement caught my eye. It went like this - "If your family doesn't deserve your best behaviour, who does?"
This caption managed to perfectly capture the vague thoughts running in my mind off late.

The Article went on to say - "A big stress factor in today's families is that while we take pains to excel at people management at our workplaces , we forget all those rules and niceties when it comes to our homes. I've seen many friends and colleagues who put a lot of effort in self-grooming, both in terms of outward appearance and behaviour, to be the best at their work...but the moment they reach back home in the evening, turn into totally different people. Mostly under a lame excuse that 'At least I can be my true self in front of my own family and in my personal space'. Well, noone's asking you to be fake, my friend, but tell me, dont' your loved ones deserve to see a side of you that you've carefully developed to leave a good impression on others."

Isn't this so very true & well applicable to each one of us??? How wonderfully we take care to create a remarkably perfect person in front of people who don't really matter to us... and just how conveniently we manage to ocassionally/frequently hurt, abuse & harass those who are an inseparable and indispensable part of our lives.
We mostly extend the 'I can be myself at home' argument to ourselves , especially after an unwarranted & unreasonable bout of misbehaviour, simply to save us all the guilt. But instead, aren't we guilty of having emotionally wounded our loved ones???
We often hide the latter variant of guilt under the guise of another line of thought - that my family does (and they most certainly should) understand any kind of inappropriate behaviour on my part, almost as an unspoken obligation. Could we be any more wrong???? It might be their responsibility to support us , to embrace our sorrows, to comfort our pain, to listen to the constant woes, or to deal with the childish tantrums but it definitely isn't their duty to again & again bear any kind of impolite trash. Our bottled up frustrations & pent up anger need not always poison its way into the utmost precious relationships.
Its imperative that we sit down and introspect and make a promise to be the bestest person to all those who love us coz 'if they don't deserve my best behavior, who does'.... Let us transform the anger into love... replace frowns with beautiful smiles... reform the perpetual nagging into gratitude...and turn the curses into kisses... :)