When we get the right knowledge, our perspective changes. We realize, “I'm a soul and I only belong to God and I'm leaving all of this one day. It could even be today!” Our perspective changes, everything comes into clear focus. That doesn't make us, it should not make us, unfeeling, cruel, uncaring; that's not the path of bhakti.
Having that come into focus, how would it affect our relationships? Now we should be able to see people more for who they are and not for who we want them to be. We're so used to looking at people through the lens of our own self-interest, we never see who they really are. When we get this correct knowledge and when we progress on the path of devotion, now our self-interest is being fulfilled by Krishna, which reduces the pressure we feel to extract happiness from those around us, behave in this way and that will ‘make me happy’.
That pressure reduces to the extent we're surrendered to Sri Krishna. So that means now we can be more forgiving, more patient, more caring, more compassionate and yet less attached because the attachment is just the result of expecting to fulfill our self-interest from that person. We're removing the attachment. We're reducing that pressure of self-interest because that's being transferred to Sri Krishna. And yet our compassion and caring for those in our family increase, it should increase. Our patience with our family members should increase and we should be forgiving.
