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The thought manifests as the word. The word manifests as the deed. The deed develops into habit. And the habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care. And let it spring from love, born out of concern for all beings. ~The Buddha
I have had a couple of people tell me, in a negative context, that I treat relationships like business deals. At first I was a little confused as to what had led them to that conclusion, but after further contemplation I have decided that: yes, I treat relationships like business deals, and no, that’s not a bad thing.
Relationships of all kinds require an emotional and/or social contract in order to be sustained. If you violate the terms of this agreement then there are consequences (arguments), and you run the risk of ending the relationship if the violation is serious enough. Whether the terms are expressed explicitly (i.e. I’ll take out the trash if you’ll do the dishes) or implicitly (i.e. in return for helping you move I expect to be thanked and feel appreciated), they are real. Everyone has their own set of expectations and rules that they bring with them. If you know that if you ask someone to help you move in return they expect an itenirary at least a few weeks in advance, for all of your stuff to be packed nicely in boxes ready for transport upon your arrival, and that these actions are in their mind a reflection of your overall appreciation then DON’T ask them to help you if you think these terms are not agreeable.
If people treated each other more like businesses SHOULD treat their most valued clients then the world would run a lot more smoothly. As much as I want to believe in the reality of ‘unconditional’ love, there really is no such thing. You CAN destroy any relationship if you violate the contract too often. People who act selfishly eventually get treated like people who don’t pay their debts. At some point someone is going to stop extending you lines of credit, and at some point they are going to stop helping you, and eventually stop caring completely.
Conversely, as any good business owner must eventually learn – lest he go bankrupt himself – there are reasonable and unreasonable prices. It is up to ME to figure out if the terms of my emotional contracts are reasonable or unreasonable. If I lose enough customers I will either negotiate my prices, seek out new clientele, or face the reality of opening up shop only to find I am the only one in the store. If you don’t like our prices, you are welcome to do your shopping ELSEWHERE.
“Two souls with a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.” ~John Keats
For as long as I can remember I have believed the description of love portrayed above. Keirsey explains that “Idealists wish to find a ‘soulmate,’ someone with whom they can bond emotionally and spiritually, sharing their deepest feelings and their complex inner worlds.”
In Plato’s Symposium, Aristophanes tells a story on ‘The Origin of Love,’ in which he depicts original man as a creature with two sets of arms, two sets of legs, and a rounded body with faces on either side of the head. There are three genders: one is 2 men (children of the sun), one is 2 women (children of the Earth), and the other male and female (children of the Moon). He goes on to explain how early man angered the Gods who saw fit to cut us into two pieces, thus creating modern men and women. Love, he says, and the act of making love, is merely our attempt at rejoining what should have never been torn. Our ‘soulmates’ are quite literally our other halves.
I always believed that when it happened, when I met my other half I would know it because that longing, that emptiness would disappear. I entered relationships to fill the void for periods of time, but never did I fool myself into thinking ‘ah, she is the one’…until…
Which brings me to today. I am faced with a number of questions as I wander forward: Do we truly only have one soulmate, or are there, in fact, multiple people who, depending on various factors could serve that purpose in our lives? If you meet your soulmate, is it guaranteed that it’ll work out? By definition, if it doesn’t, are they not your soulmate? Or, as a friend asked me, is it possible to truly be in love with more than one person?
Maya Angelou once said, “If someone shows you who they are, believe them.”
This philosophy is something I am trying to adopt more into my everyday approach to life – taking people as they present themselves – as the lumps of rock I see before me, not the gemstones I see so vividly lurking beneath the surface. There is nothing inherently wrong with trying to see the best in others, but despite my best efforts to treat them as such, not everyone is a diamond just waiting for the right person to come along and etch away the mire and muck from around them.
What I never quite accounted for in all of my excavations is that sometimes if you try too hard to polish a lump of rock into a diamond you end up washing all the dirt away and you’re left with nothing but a pile of mud and tiny fractured bits of rock. It’s ok to hope for the best, to look for the best, to even try to bring out the best in others, but that doesn’t mean molding them into the shape you’ve pictured for them in your own mind. Setting about furiously etching away, telling that rock over and over ‘you’re a diamond, you’re a diamond,’ can be daunting. When you are finished, with too much pressure, you could be left holding a ruby that now thinks it’s worthless because, afterall, it’s not a diamond.
It is my nature to focus on what might be, what could be, and what is possible, rather than what is. And though it may be hopelessly romantic the grand visions I conjure up in the idealized world in my head, a cracked, but real, ruby is worth a 1,000 imagined diamonds.
As fellow Idealist, Herman Hesse, wrote:
“It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.”
One Lost Idealist 