Relationships

It is difficult to come to an agreement on this subject, even though it is one that we all deal with at some time in our lives. The greatest problem is that so many people are mixed up about so much in their life that something as fundamental and powerful as being loved and loving others is beyond them-and this goes double for those struggling to simply survive. On the hierarchy of needs, food beats love every time. By this I mean a person has to be very secure in order to really love another, and being worried about where one’s next meal is or what another person thinks is not a very secure foundation. Even after settling one's life by meeting those basic needs, one still has to gain experience with the subject. By this, I mean that thinking about something and actually doing it are very different experiences. People often fantasize about relationships, but those are idealized to minimize effort for maximum rewards-as all fantasies are; real relationships are not like that, they are all work. Further, to do something well always takes practice, yet we are told that we will simply get this "right" the first time! Supposedly the first time we fall in love, we will have found the person with whom we spend the rest of our lives. Also, evidently, making friends and getting along with fellow students, coworkers, etc., is natural, because we aren’t taught how to make those connections either. After this fantasy we finally come to the reality of it: when we have relationships, we fumble and fail-as we should. The best way to learn something is still to do it. Inevitably we get hurt, we make those mistakes with our relationships. Friends come and go, family is estranged, marriages end; all these things are symptoms of our deficiency. Still we improve over time, each failure teaches us something we need to know. If people truly wanted to avoid these hurts, then we would actually teach the inexperienced what they need to know. There is an old adage, “No [person] is an island.” the problem being that everyone is an island in that we have no natural emotional connection to others. We need to form attachments, even between family, between parents and offspring. This is meant in two different ways: first we “need” to do it because it is important for our well being, and secondly because it isn’t automatic, it does require effort. Finally, what sort of relationships are we forming? Are they strong, healthy ones or are they made from desperation, just to meet our need for companionship? It can be very difficult to tell, unless we examine how it makes us feel. Are you lost without your mate? Does your world revolve around the status of your relationship? Do you feel like you don’t deserve the relationship? Do you sacrifice yourself to maintain the relationship? If you answered, “yes” to any of these questions, you may want to seriously look at what you want out of your life and the relationship you are in. Always remember, you cannot Love another until you Love yourself.

Dis-connection

Going back to an earlier topic, why is it that we are encouraged to specialize in particular areas, and to be completely ignorant of others? Should we not be able to do things for ourselves; are we so limited that we can only grasp a small portion of what makes up our world? Isn’t being alive all about making connections, about having relationships with others? Doesn’t it seem ridiculous to hear about a doctor who can’t do laundry, a mechanic who doesn’t know to cook, or a Chemistry teacher who can’t answer simple questions about History-to carry it further, what about not having friends that are different? Who decided that we should not know people who don’t have as much money, or have backgrounds removed from our own? Aside from a question of the quality of our education, this is about the focus of our knowledge, or the restrictive nature of focus. Having a specialty is great, especially one that grows out of a true passion, it allows for the immersion into a subject that few people choose to explore. This seems increasingly important as there grow to be more and more people; for example, if only .001% of the population enjoys swimming, how crowded are swimming spots if there are 60 million of us, and how about when there are 6 billion? As the sheer number of people competing for the same resources grows, the same percentage of the population cannot get that same experience as they jostle amoungst all the new people who share that interest. In response, there need to be new experiences that open up so that we don’t get the intense pressure to compete more fiercely within those old practices. Otherwise we will end up fighting each other over whose turn it is to fly their kite at the beach while timing people as they stroll down the road in the woods. There may be a drive or need to funnel enjoyment into activities or narrow categories because of population pressure, but this should not lead to the exclusion of all other pursuits. It should never be necessary to limit ourselves so severely just so that we still have fun. We should always be having fun, in everything we do there should be some enjoyment. After all, if we aren’t having fun, what is the use in living?