Relationships. Ah, now there’s another wonderful, frustrating, rewarding and highly emotional thing! Don’t be without them. Seek them out.
The wider level is the relationship one has with other people: co-workers, friends, even a person on the street you stop to talk with, realizing you share a perspective, generating a light warmth. Anyone you care to engage becomes a relationship, however briefly. We attract, spin around their gravity, then centrifugally launch ourselves along our path, advantaged by the gravity of the encounter. Find many of these, for they abound in each day. As a bonus, a few will become deeper, more than just momentary encounters.
One-on-one relationships are another thing, much more involved and enduring. Much more complicated and demanding; also more gratifying, supportive, and meaningful. There are romantic notions of love at first sight, one person in the whole world, forever and never. I dismiss these as pleasant fairy tales. Interest and lust at first sight, yes! One person out of billions scattered around the planet? I think not. Forever and never sound nice but they don’t usually fit the reality. Waiting for such keeps us apart from the connection we desire, opportunities much closer at hand.
Cinderella aside, one has to work to create relationships. Two shy people never connect in the first place. Waiting for an accidental collision leaves you ultimately alone, or temporarily connected to an aggressive driver. Hopefully, our human nature to connect provides the impetus to get us moving; a mutual interest overcomes the awkwardness of beginning. And any awkward comment, boldly made, will serve to start. So go ahead: say something!
Smiles help too. Sends a “yes” message – just yes, I’m curious to see where the next step might lead. Nothing more. Trying to hold a firm, expressionless face – so as not to appear forward or intimidating – is actually more intimidating, but in a negative direction. Smile. “Hello.” Begin.
Keeping a relationship going is an entirely different skill – somewhere between an art and an act of love. It requires work and rework. It requires constant communication, vigilance, compromise and lots of caring.
She wants to go this way; he wants that. They are stuck, both intransigent. If the love is strong, it lifts them over the divide. “Do for love, what I would not do.”1 They each give a little, finding a workable middle ground, a way forward.
He is busy. She is preoccupied. Thoughts of themselves as a couple start to slip away – until one grabs the other and calls a time out from the hectic churn keeping them apart. They let the love surface, rekindle. The fire rises; the warmth shares on.
Relationships. We are not fulfilled until we meet that essential need of our human condition. Meet it well, and the rewards will amaze!