Time & Perspective Quote by Eknath Easwaran

Eknath Easwaran is quietly trying to smuggle something bracing into a sentence that sounds almost gentle: the future of a relationship is rarely decided in the dramatic moments we fetishize. It is decided in the small, repeatable ones we barely notice. The line works because it demotes “crisis” from destiny to spectacle. Breakups and blowups feel explanatory because they’re loud; Easwaran insists they’re often just the final audit of a thousand unexamined transactions.

The subtext is behavioral, almost spiritual in its discipline: intimacy is a practice, not a feeling. “Little every incidents” (the charmingly imperfect phrasing) points to the mundane micro-choices that build or erode trust - tone, attention, patience, how someone handles minor irritation, how they narrate a bad day, whether they repair quickly or score points. He’s arguing that character shows up as habit, and habit shows up under low stakes long before it shows up under high stakes.

Context matters here: Easwaran, known for translating and teaching Indian spiritual texts to Western audiences, often frames ethics as something lived in ordinary moments rather than proclaimed in ideals. Read that way, the quote is less relationship advice than a critique of our crisis-centered storytelling. We want a single turning point because it absolves us from noticing patterns. Easwaran’s intent is to train attention: if you can read the everyday, you don’t need catastrophe to tell you what you already knew.