Relational: is how we interrelate with others. This covers a large range of possibilities because not everyone is safe or trustworthy. Learning and discerning limitety measures, building walls where needed yet allowing appropriate people and ideas in is a measure of health.
Jerry was smart. He told me so, himself. “I’m probably more intelligent than you are.” He was in the psych ward. I was changing lightbulbs. “They should not call the sun the sun because it is a star, not a sun.” Okay. “Why do you say that, Jerry?” He ignored me, continuing his discussion: “It is a ball of burning gas, it burns hotter than 10,000 degrees. You can’t put it out with water. Water has no effect on it.” He continued pacing the hallway.
Intelligence means nothing if we cannot communicate. We must interact and reason with others. Building relationships is a mark of higher health. It is a higher level of existence: Just listening to others; being sensitive to wants, feelings and desires of others; helping others grow; being vulnerable in honesty, yet firm and strong.
Again, I bring up the narcissist. Everything is about him. This is unhealthy. The person who wants power and control. The person who manipulates to get her way. This is unhealthy.
What kind of friends do you have? How do you treat others? In a perfect world, friends, family, acquaintances, neighborhoods would all be safe. Everyone would encourage and expect the best from each other. This world is not perfect. There is danger. Not everyone is safe.
Unfortunately, I do not have much to say about this. It is obvious to me that I have either been damaged in this area or never grew here. It is obvious that I do not have the ability to discern other people’s motives. People who are manipulative can wrap me around their figurative finger. I have learned that I simply must stay away from these people. Someone else will have to write this chapter and I will need to read it.
What about that great loneliness inside? What do we do with this?
In my younger years, I thought I had a stable and healthy family. I still think this. However, we moved a lot. I did not realize it at the time, but this caused severe damage I am only now understanding. The first significant time we moved, I was three years old. We moved from my dad’s home in upstate NY to Dubuque Iowa. This had the effect of ripping me away from my extended family. I knew no one but my father, mother, and sister. Without the extended family of cousins, uncles and aunts, one becomes vulnerable to the prejudices and cliques of others in the unfamiliar surroundings. I will discuss this more in the second section of vulnerabilities. The point here is that stability is lost with every move. I was too young to recognize this as unhealthy. I thought it was normal and that I could handle it.
One of the first things that happened when we arrived at our new location was I met a bratty girl who simple said “we don’t like outsiders”. I was an outcast to that worthless kid. Unfortunately, I was too young to know that her opinion did not matter. I was injured both in my expectation of “meeting new friends” and devastated in that I was rejected for the first time in my life without any reason or explanation. The severity of this injury to a three year old child who had just moved from family love, was devastating. It may be this was the cause of my shyness and the beginning of withdrawal and being a loner. At the age of three years, I was not able to explain this to my parents. I simply had no words. The feelings of rejection was new to me.
Later, I did make friends, but we moved and moved again. Always I leave friends behind. Never, do I see them again. (As I am older, the phrase changes to “seldom do I see them”. Internet makes keeping in touch easier. I do keep in touch with some. However, some are dead. Others, I have simply lost touch.
I have learned one thing over the years. Love is spelled T-I-M-E. Sitting down together, watching sunsets, playing card or board games, activities like cooking or grilling. Interacting over time is key to any relationship. We hear about this thing called “Quality Time” does anyone know what it means? Any time together is quality as long as we are listening and investing in the other person.
One enemy of T-I-M-E is busyness. Busy watching the game, or some sitcom or anything on TV because when we watch TV we do not think and we do not engage. We are hypnotized into a stupor much like an addiction.
Exhaustion is another enemy. We work so hard, we have no energy to interact with our children or others. Interaction takes a lot of energy. More energy than reading. When we are exhausted, we focus on our own wants, desires and needs. It’s the Hierarchy, we must have our basic needs met before we can meet the needs of others.
The point of all this is to say interpersonal relationships is a high level achievement. Many people are damaged in this area, few are accomplished. As I write this, I now know interaction is an important part of healing. No matter where we are damage or how extensive the damage is, face to face interaction has a healing effect.
Relationships and Assumptions: We all have basic assumptions. These assumptions are reflections of ourselves:
I met Sue at work. Our trails kept crossing as she would go on her daily business and I would go on mine. Every time we met at the elevator, going to the same floor for different reasons, we would say “Hi” and exchange pleasantries. As a sixty year old man, with thirty some grandchildren, she became like a daughter to me. Over the years’ time, I watched her grow large than take leave to have her child. I saw her through the eyes of a father, a grandfather and a pastor. She saw me through the eyes of a single parent desperately looking for someone stable.
I don’t look sixty. She was shocked to discover that I am married and have children. Poor girl, I think I broke her heart.
I learned long ago, that the only way I have to discern who a person is, is to recognize how they see me. A thief will not trust me. A drunkard will ask if I want to drink or party with him. An honest person will assume I am honest. She thought I was young and available.
When we meet someone, we know nothing about them so we fill in the blanks with reflections of ourselves. “This person I just met has the same likes and dislikes as me. They think like I think. They have the same background and will react the same way I react.” As I get to know a person, I learn about them and can replace my basic assumptions with reality. Over time, I discover that the person I met is completely different than the person I assumed to exist from the beginning. I learn that the person has flaws, for example, then the crush I might have had evaporates into reality. Unfortunately, when we have been traumatized, these basic assumptions swing to extremes. We might think that every priest is a child molester. Everyone at the bar is someone worth getting to know. There are stories behind those two lines. A girl goes to the bar looking for a man who will care for her. A man goes to the bar thinking every girl is looking for a night of sex. These are assumptions that lead to trouble.
If we come from a stable family background, we assume the person we meet is stable. If we come from a family of divorce, we assume relationships are temporary and that breakup is normal. Damage fosters damage. We do not know any better.
Unfortunately, an honest, naive innocent person becomes prey to people who are not like this. It is easy for the wolf to camouflage itself in the assumptions of sheep.
Maybe this is the toehold of pornography. A five year old stumbles across pornography for whatever reason and the basic assumption is that “this is the way girls are.” There is no way for a child to know the horrible circumstances that exist behind the camera. What kind of lies and manipulation occurred where the camera could capture a moment presenting the lie as truth?
Hollywood knows how to lie. Stories are created. People act. Money is exchanged. Lies are told. Fantasy is presented as reality. Reality is lost. People’s minds are manipulated into thinking and believing the view and thoughts of the writer. This is what storytelling is about: Presenting an argument through thoughts, description and ideas to manipulate feelings and opinions. Movies are stories we see. A movie achieves its purpose if, afterward, you think and feel differently than you did before you began watching it.
When we meet a stranger, we know nothing about him or her. We assume that person is just like us. We unintentionally lie to ourselves because we are ignorant of the truth. This leads to damage as we discover the truth is not what we had assumed.
I did not set out to damage Sue by lying to her or leading her on, just as she did not lie to me. We lied to ourselves when we made unconscious assumptions the moment we met.
10) Societal