“No relationship is perfect, ever. There are always some ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater...The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that's the key. It's like a big pie chart, and the love in a relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.”
― Sarah Dessen, This Lullaby
The week of Valentine's Day has been tumultuous--mostly in good ways, but not without enough shennanigans to get me thinking about what's important in relationships.
Friendship, buddyship, and love are ways of being present with others. They have common characteristics, hallmarks.
Simplicity--maybe not contextually--we have to continue to traverse our way through many unknowns. And many of these unknowns lead to stubbing our toes, tripping, falling, making errors. Sometimes we get bruised--hopefully not intentionally. But sometimes, even as we strive for simplicity we encounter rickety stairs and slick hills.
We are human. We lose our patience. Sometimes lose our temper and act abruptly. In our deepest moments of humanity--which I hope are frequent--we notice our compassionability, our capacity and ability to be, express and accept compassion. This is a hallmark, not only of healthy relationships, but also of intrapersonal strength. Developing or expressing compassionability can be daunting.
Perhaps we've made choices that limit our abilities to easily express love and friendship. After all, we're socialized to check boxes--to be either or rather than both and. But of course the experience of humanity is not nice and neat. It is messy, requires spontaneity; it has peaks and valleys. At our own highest highs we revel in awareness, laughter, humor, and buddyships. At our lowest lows we question ourselves. We allow our minds to be overwhelemed with doubt--perhaps shame and regret. I find that no affective state is more distressful than regret--the desire to un-do an action or statement. When we're low, we feel isolated and discontent; raw and unsafely vulnerable.
Love and friendship are solution-focused. Friends, buddys, partners and lovers seek out and embrace opportunities to care for and express caring and concern for one another. Conversely, we thoughtuflly walk away from temptations to blame, take jabs, or make accusatory statements.
We keep our sights set high on the belief that we each have something good to offer one another--that we are partners in a common, higher principle.
Love and friendship have a sense of balance. Relationships have reciprocity, equanimity, homeostasis. We offer support but we also ask for it. We know our strengths and share them--as supports and as lessons.
We are teachers and students of one another. That is an important hallmark; our appreciation and respect of our interconnectivity. We likewise recognize and address our weaknesses. We ask for help from those stonger and wiser--and we accept and respond to valid criticisms of our weaknesses.
Compassionability resides with our negative emotions (remember, we're human). So don't bother to try to extinguish negative emotions--rather, strive to allow your ability to be compassionate to be the primary source of decision-making when faced with a surprisingly challenge person or situation.
Some pointers on how to cultivate these halmarks:
- Always take time for lunch...to go to a quiet spot, perhaps a park--and read a book that a buddy suggested.
- Find a time in the day to listen to silence.
- Strive to go 24 hours without complaining; repeat.
- Notice the lives of others.
- If you see the same people every day, make sure you introduce yourself; know the name of the guy who lockers next to you.
- Take a subtle no for an answer, but don't read things into everything.
- Sing along.
- Forgive the past. We've all been saints and sinners...and we'll continue to be.
