Relationships Can Be Tricky

Relationships can be tricky. They never remain the same. They are constantly changing like a free-flowing river; it just depends on how many times you put your toe into that river with a thought, word, or action to the degree it changes.

Relationships can be fleeting, like the flash of a smile, or they can endure like a 60-year-plus marriage. They can be loving, like the greeting of a baby at birth, or as destructive as a rape. But each counts. Each is powerful, for that experience becomes a part of who we are, no matter its significance.

Until recently, I thought of the term relationship much like most of us think of it as primarily the relationship or link we have with our significant other or others in our life:  our love connection, our family, our friends, and so forth. But I have grown to realize relationships and connections are much more widespread; we simply need to be aware of them. They are often the synchronicities of life, and we unwittingly play a part in them.

For example, many of us go through periods in our life (particularly when we seek a mate) where we try on relationships like a piece of clothing to see if that person suits us and if that relationship is a “fit.”  There is something about being in that state of mind where it seems easier to discard what doesn’t work without much thought. And yet, it is then that we can most easily affect another in a negative, hurtful way.

But who is to say that may not be part of the larger plan? Maybe being rejected is to allow us to become emotionally determined in the belief of our goodness despite any external judgment of us since the most significant relationship that anyone can have is the relationship one has with itself. Only when we can accept and love ourselves can we experience the most extraordinary relationship of all … one with the Oneness of All That Is. And therein lies the reason for our journey here on earth—the opportunity to experience ALL of life and to be able to connect with others.

At the end of our journey lies our purpose in life and what really matters most:  how much we have loved. And that includes the love of all beyond humans.

How does that work? Most of us can appreciate the relationship and love we have for our pets … particularly in our culture, where we tend to humanize our pets and allow them to ride next to us in the car, accompany us on vacation trips, and wear clothes and accessories fashioned after humans. What beyond that? Because everything is energy, we can have a relationship with anything! It can be as simple as connecting to an individual plant or anything in Mother Nature.

I overheard a woman telling her friend that she had a very “good relationship” with food. But what did she mean? At the time, I thought her comment very odd since, until then, I hadn’t given much thought to having a relationship with food even though I love fine food. The more I thought about it, her statement made sense to me. If we can love something and appreciate it more, we can have a “good relationship” with it. In her case, if we can recognize and honor the animals, fish, vegetables, grains, and fruit that provide for us, it allows us to connect with them, thereby establishing a relationship with them.

Isn’t that the way all “good relationships” work? It is when we love, honor, and respect those we encounter, even in a small way, without expecting or demanding anything in return. As we become more aware of those around us, human or not, the number of potentially good relationships is without limit, and our world can become filled with the joy of living in ways beyond what we could have imagined. How blessed we are!

“A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world.”  ~Leo Buscaglia