How to Keep Your Relationships Alive

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MAUDE: As many of you are aware, I have embarked on an adventure for this next year, birthday to birthday, of spending quality time with each of my closest relationships. (See this previous post.) Doesn’t really matter what we do, just as long as we set aside time to revel in the relationship itself, mainly just hanging out with each other. This invitation has resulted in some marvelous plans for trips and activities. I have started a little pre-birthday, have had a few of these escapades (just returned from a week in the high Sierras), and have already garnered some profound personal insights as well as sharing some great belly laughs.

This has led me to reflect on another aspect of peaceful relationships, and that is maintaining your awareness of the value of those connections. People often fall into habit patterns within their longer and precious relationships. There is an unconscious sense of “I know this person, and I know how we interact and what there is to give and get from this connection.”

As being present and aware are vital components of any valued relationship, there is an understanding that, when practiced consciously, ensures success. As is often the case, this is simple to apply once realized. Remain aware that each such connection is a continuing exploration. Life holds nothing but change, and we can constantly grow and open, learning more of ourselves and our dear ones.

As we do this, many small and larger miracles occur; conflicts and strife tend to dissolve. They get replaced by the kind of attention and interest in the other person that keeps things alive and in the present, rather than being filled with projections and preconceptions. Your busyness with self gets moderated with an experience of the relationship and the value of the interactions taking place. When you keep in mind that you are exploring together, you focus on very different things.

There is so much to be learned from the skills with which you experience your deepest ties, not only about yourself and the other person, but about how you can have and spread peaceful relating. When your awareness allows ongoing fresh experiences with others, and you seek deeper exploration, you gain a treasure trove of knowing that you can share with larger groups of people.

This is what we refer to as spreading peace one relationship at a time. No matter what is happening in the world, we can all practice this freely.

PHIL: I want to open with something I’ve said before, but I think it’s a useful starting point. It ties in with my recent thinking about language, which is that language has been such a successful way of understanding the world that we use it all the time. By paying attention to the language, we risk missing what is actually going on. Our body still reacts to the world because that is how it has always worked, but if we don’t find words for it, we are not conscious of it, and are pushed around by our responses.

I’ve started with language because I’ve noticed that the language about a relationship is exclusively in the present tense. I am in a relationship. If I was in a relationship, or hope that I will be in a relationship, no relationship exists. This points to a relationship being an experience; something that exists in the present, and so we should pay attention to that.

Certainly, relationships are in part a meeting of the minds: an online text relationship or an old-fashioned pen pal exists in words alone. You’ve probably also had the opposite experience of meeting someone at a party and failing to find anything in common; you can’t relate to their thought patterns, their language, or their interests.

But a relationship is also an experience, an animal connection if you like, and like experiences in general, that aspect only reaches consciousness when we pay attention to it. In an article paying tribute to Peter Sellers, Woody Allen wrote:

All I can say about Peter was that apart from all his character skills and voices and technical brilliance, he had a built-in funny quality and made you laugh the minute he appeared on screen. It’s nothing you can learn and very few even successful comics have it. I’m sure there was nothing he could do to produce it or understand it himself. It was just magically there, that funniness.

So, in your relationships, you need to look for the feelings that arise. They might be love, distaste, suspicion, admiration; any of hundreds of reactions, and you don’t need to say them, just be aware of them.

This is another way of saying “be present”, which is a challenge, for me at least. I like this quote from Tara Bennett-Goleman:

If it is pleasant, be aware without clinging. If it is unpleasant, be aware without resistance. If your response is indifference, precise awareness can prevent it from becoming boring.

Between these two quotes, I recognize the nature of my relationship with Maude. I just hang out, marvel at the inexplicable fact that we are so different and yet fit so well together. It is that “precise awareness” that powers the relationship every day and keeps it alive.

Photo credit: Suzanne Dechert
Photo note: Maude in the Sierra Nevadas

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