First off, it’s been a wild week. Even though we are still on lock down I have had too many professional, educational, personal, and spiritual commitments to count. Nothing worry-some, each has just taken so much time to attend to that I missed writing here by two days. The biggest commitment this week has been interactions with others (obviously socially distancing) and maintaining relationships.
It’s funny looking back to last weeks post discussing feelings. A few friends reached out to me asking about the feelings wheel and how it works. I took the time to go back and edit the post to more thoroughly explain how the wheel works in paragraph seven. Taking the time to then discuss the feelings wheel with them let both of us have a deeper understanding of each others current emotional and mental state of being. It was a very intimate experience and I really enjoyed learning about them. These small, meaningful, interactions made me reflect on my relationships. Now I don’t just mean relationships with significant others, but all of the relationships in my life. This includes: old friends, new friends, family, lovers, mentors, social media connections, colleagues, and people who I have a cultivated connections with. ALL of these relationships have helped me become the person I am today. Some of them have helped me, some set me back, some have lasted for over twenty years, some of them just started, some of them have stopped and then restarted. Relationships can help determine so many possible pathways for us in life, why would anyone want to limit these possibilities when they seem so exciting and appear to show potential optimistic outcomes. How do we know which relationship is going to help us or hinder us when we engage in connection, we don’t! I am limited through my experiences because of time and resistance to applying myself in certain relationships; however I have learned so much from each of these personal bonds and would like to enlighten you through my experiences.
Let’s start with old friends. A couple of weeks ago I met up and social distanced with an old friend from high school, who I haven’t connected with for quite a while. We’ve seen each other twice since that initial visit. It was so wonderful swapping stories, catching up, and ultimately seeing how much we have both grown and learned from our past relationships. We met in middle school and had several classes together but didn’t really try to hang out or get to know one another until high school. I am so thankful for this person and genuinely appreciate her insight and opinions on so many aspects of life. She is a wonderful soul who cares about everyone in her life and is one of the few people I know who reaches out to people when she knows they need help. I always knew she was like this, but I took her caring nature for granted and expected this type of effort from most of the people I met in college. I wasn’t until the end of college that I figured out this kind of interpersonal dedication was rare and not something to anticipate from others. This is a relationship that I am rekindling and strengthening.
We had started talking about our previous relationships and how they’ve changed and formed us into how we see people now. I am someone who puts my all into the people around me; someone who wants to watch the people I love, grow into the best version of themselves they can become. This is the type of relationship I want to be apart of. Not a relationship where you treat each other like social competition, who can be the best and leave the other person behind.
This type of relationship doesn’t build one another up, it tears you both down inside, to where you loose sight of what’s really important: your love for one another. That’s all relationships really are: sharing different forms of love with one another; whether it be familial, friendly, or romantic. Showing people how much you care about them and telling them how important they are.