Relationships

Relationships are highly defined today. You have a relationship with your spouse. A relationship with your kids. Your parents. Your friends. Extended family. Your boss. Your co-workers. Peers. Colleagues.

What we don’t think about is our relationship with ourselves. The relationship we have with the community. With the people we seek to serve. And then there are the relationships that distract us. We have a relationship with technology, social media, and the internet. There is a relationship we have with failure or victories. And let’s not forget the relationship we have with time. Since we as a culture have chosen to trade it as a commodity in exchange for pay, we now view time as something we are racing against. Ever balancing how much we give and how much we take. What we choose to pay attention to also says much about our relationships.

All these variables impact the depth of our connections with the world and the people around us. In the end, our personal relationship with the internal narrative also dictates how far we go with these relationships. In the story, we tell ourselves about being a hero, a protagonist, and a victim, and the people around us make such a profound impact.

The external is nowhere near as powerful as we give it credit for. It is our assessment of these forces that matter and that we can exercise some control. It’s a choice to delete social media and to take back time. It’s another to pick up the phone and reach out. And it is another to sit to the side, to choose to try again (or not and be at peace).