Since returning from a wonderful visit home, I have found myself asking a question more often: what is a relationship? Is it after you’ve broken bread together or signed a contract or continuously bumped into one another at the gym?
Or is it based on whether you ‘click’ or not?
© Sonja Nuttall 2008-2011
Roger’s 21st Century Thesaurus states:
accord, affair, affiliation, affinity, alliance, analogy, appositeness, association, bond, communication, conjunction, consanguinity, consociation, contact, contingency, correlation, dependence, dependency, exchange, homogeneity, hookup, interconnection, interrelation, interrelationship, kinship, liaison, likeness, link, marriage, nearness, network, parallel, pertinence, pertinency, proportion, rapport, ratio, relation, relativity, relevance, similarity, tie, tie-in, tie-up
Two words caught my eye: communication and consciousness. They stuck in my mind, and I began to think how wonderful it’d be if I could consciously watch my relationships grow. How we communicate with this person is paramount and it doesn’t matter who it is. Whether it’s the wonderful doorman who greets me every day and night, or the few minutes in the elevator with the chairman of a Fortune 100 company, our few seconds with anyone forms a memory. Isn’t a memory, then, part of our relationship file folder?
I am now pretty convinced it is.
This month I was in my homeland, Zimbabwe, and I watched myself slowly become less “New York” and more like my rather odd birth self. I realized even my relationship with myself was different, even if some psychiatrists would chuckle at such a thought. All I do know is I liked myself more.
Relationships – I now truly feel it’s about how we relate to someone tbat’s important. It’s the start of a relationship. The CQ™ approach can help us empathize and make this connection – we must thinking before we speak or act, wonder what is it that I want out of this, and consider what I think they want out of it. I believe it’s a pretty fair statement to say most of us want a pleasant and genuine exchange, no matter how brief the relationship might end up being.
I’ll end by saying I am thinking about my intentions more loudly and hoping all I come across aren’t harmed with my own personal noise.
Be well,
- c
Something that stuck out to me from this post was our relationships’ dependence on memory. Very true, but is that also dangerous? It reminds me a line of dialogue from Christopher Nolan’s film Memento. “Memory can change the shape of a room; it can change the color of a car. And memories can be distorted. They’re just an interpretation, they’re not a record.” I find it fascinating that we can choose to remember or not remember certain details of our relationships, depending on what we want from them. I know with people i WANT to like, I will remember them in a more positive way than perhaps I should. It’s harder than it seems to be honest with yourself
I always find that my relationship with others is at its best when my relationship with myself is strong. I have to remind myself to communicate my own needs to myself so I can assist in the needs of others. If everyone took your advice and thought about what they said before saying it or considered what they wanted out of the relationship before acting upon it we might have a much healthier CQ all around. I enjoyed this, as usual. Looking forward to the next blog Clare.
I believe homes can definitely serve as our own personal litmus tests to measure how we’ve changed throughout time. There is something about returning home that forces us to realize how we treat objects and others differently.
I’m thinking a lot about this post.
What is a relationship?
A way in which people and things are connected to each other. Understanding personality and human relationships…
But there is a deeper meaning: “From person to person”
Independent of our differences, we are people.
Yes! I like to think about it. We are equal … Where the look speaks all languages … Where the smile says trust me … Where the natural curiosity follows the natural way and… ” How we communicate with this person is paramount and it doesn’t matter who it is”.
More understanding of others is more accepting of others.
Is good!