This morning I thought, I’m writing a blog, but if I wish others to read my blog, I should also read the blog of others. So I went around, and finally settled with reading the blog of Invisible Children, the group that brought us Kony 2012 (http://blog.invisiblechildren.com). It showed me a lot what I didn’t know about the group, like that they’re still active and didn’t just fall of the map, and that they have a new youtube movie called Move, that they got invited to Oprah (Sorry, I don’t watch Oprah =) ).
But what I really learned is that there’s this hidden part of me that I forgot existed, a part of me that I last saw come out around my high school days. A social part of me that believed in the human connection, that believed in friends, and that you are not alone. Yep, I’m a loner, a hermit in the middle of the city. I don’t socialize, and that allows me to have this unique perspective in life. But I also am missing out on part of being human, a big part – relationships.
I have my family, I have my co-workers, I have people I talk to online. But that’s about it. Being a hermit makes me very knowledgeable (for the lack of a better word) about the value of having relationships.
If you’ve read through my past blog posts, you see that I see relationships as the thing that will “save the world” so to speak. Corrupt relationships are what doomed the world, and healing these relationships will save the world.
What kind of relationships am I talking about? The “I AM my brother’s keeper” kind of relationships.
Back to the topic of reading other people’s blogs, I felt for the first time that I was trying to get to know other people, something I haven’t done in a long time. I was trying to get to know who Jason Russel (Invisible Children’s chief creative officer) was. I was trying to get to know more of what Invisible Children did, their beliefs, what they did in their spare time, and things like that.
I was trying to create a relationship with Invisible Children.
And the only way I can learn about them is by reading what they write, listening to what they say. And if ever they found out I was interested in building a relationship with them, maybe they’d be interested in building a relationship with me too. And short of sending me an email, they can read my blog. And since they don’t know who I am other than by my pen name, if ever they wanted to reply to what I write, they can say something about me or send me a message via their blog, which I read.
Which brings me to something else…
Relationships are not a one time thing. They are regular, continuing, ongoing things. Perhaps they might not work out, but you can keep on trying, changing it a little bit over time, trying to make it evolve, make it grow up. Say a boy and a girl meet by chance and figure they got something in common. They trade phone numbers and try to meet up again, just spend time together, get to know each other. They try different things, and some things might work, some things might not. But they keep at it and eventually they got a good relationship going.
Now if they just met once, had a one night stand and never met again, that’s not a relationship!
Relationships are something you can rely on, like family. Family is a relationship that is more or less thrust upon you whether you like it or not. But if ever something bad happened to you, like if you lost your home or something, you can always fall back on your family, live for a while with your parents or brother or sister, borrow some funds until you can get back on your feet. Now without your family, you would have become a street urchin or something. Thanks to your family, you have a second chance in life.
Now what if the other relationships we create in life, our friends and neighbors, what if we can create them to become as sturdy and strong as our family relationships, such that if ever something really big happened, we can fall back on each other and have a second chance in life?
Relationships do have a lifecycle, like any other living being. First there’s awareness, then there’s desire, then there’s priorities, etc. You don’t just all of a sudden say “I love you, and you love me, and as long as we’re together everything’s alright.” It doesn’t work that way. You need to take it slowly, try different things, spend time together, communicate, think about what’s important. It requires work.
It’s not always about being happy together all the time either. There are happy times and there are sad times. During the happy times you build your relationship, getting to know each other, finding out all the ways you can help each other. During the sad times you use that knowledge to help each other, rely on each other to make it through life.
Makes sense, doesn’t it?
