Personal Relationships

Of all the topics I've explored in several lives, only one demands a retreat to moderate innocence, claiming no special knowledge but what has been gained through the same tumbles, tears and flights of fancy that have left others, and even the best, in ruins. We claim no adept's robes, and the scars signify no special purse of wisdom. No place of valor, or virtue of long experience is mine to claim. Every particular pleasure (so Emerson said they were), and every scratch and bite comes with the same cost it has to other men, and if I could be so presumptuous... women. We don't advance in this cause through achievements.

Before going forward, I'm what is clinically called heterosexual. I won't say that these comments are not suitable or applicable to others. I won't say they are, I don't know. Honestly I don't care to know because they are my reflections and that's my experience and perspective.

Behind us the disclaimers and false expectations. Ahead, a trough of observations and hopes. It may end soon, too, as do some of the things we're thinking about here.

Personal... Because, its personal. That is to say, retreating from the clamor of  divisive and compelling expectations of the broad public, and engaged in with sufficient interest and protection to give it substance apart from the credit one would get for it. How many marriages have been produced because of a sense that it is better to be married, with a superficial emotional underpinning, to justify the shallow cause. Personal because there is interest, sufficient to jettison the nearly endless squeal of  personal ambitions. Incidentally interest rises above the needs, and gratification of personal desire for companionship. As its often been said responding to the desire for those things, "get a dog". Oh and needs, yes.. there are those who whether for money or other private interests, engage in sex, or even eat together. That's not interest. Personal interest is what accounts for a large collection of curious statuary which, when viewed inevitably trigger the words "very interesting", and "oh how unique!", and the masked grimaces that the collector knows are occurring but ignores. Its personal interest because it has no need of approval and does not derive from conformity or seeds of popularity. A personal relationship is one which, regardless of where it came from, its closely guarded, and with no tolerance for dishonesty, abides in the nourishing care of the person whose it is. Otherwise, it simply.. won't exist.

Relationship... is defined as the characteristics that interconnect two objects. Of course we aren't talking about the baseball card collection, or Precious Moment's dolls mentioned above. We are speaking of people. Pause here, please. I think some have to get off this train, and I have nothing against you, but reaching the end of this article hereafter is simply impossible for you, because you haven't realized that, in regards to people, you are of the same substance, the same properties and the same nature, and there is none who are not worthy of being called your equal. So, bye bye.. There are no real personal relationships for you.  The relationship between people, while its possible for there to be a relationship between a basketball and a ping pong ball, or a spore in Horton's Whoverse, is not a personal relationship unless tenets of reality are present, and the main one here is.. a truth concerning another person is that your persons, in regards to natural dignity, are equal. Hence, no ownership, no "talking down", no dictatorships. Oh yes, you've had those situations.. They were dysfunctional, inadequate and served to reduce your humanity, sometimes fatally. No, this is not overly dramatic. They were misclassified as personal relationships.

Given interest, and personality and respect, and a deep connection.. then we have the idea which I supposed. No, we have the beginnings, and they can end in disaster (not really but it feels that way at the moment). Or, maybe you found out where your interest is best spent. Your personal weaknesses are understood, and mildly corrected, as you do for your partner in that relationship.. because, like you, a person, and an interest is shared.

You were hoping for something wise and profound? Get a dog.