Lately, my life has been full of conversations revolving around the topic of relationships. Being connected to other people is something that has always been very important to my husband and me. I believe that human beings were created to be in relationships with other human beings and the conversations as of late have consisted in figuring out what that practically looks like. We all need to be known and deeply cared for, as well as, to know and deeply care for someone else. However, it is not unusual for people to go most of their lives without being known or knowing someone else. There are some who say that this is a consequence of technology. While I agree that technology in some ways contributes to the problem (last night a friend of mine said that it gives us a false sense of connection to others); I believe our relational inhibitors run more deeply than this throughout our history as human beings.

Human beings in all societies have both spoken and unspoken social etiquette. Before I go any further I want to make clear that I don’t believe that social etiquette is bad, in fact, I think in many ways it serves a very positive function. However, there are ways that I feel we have become relationally hindered them; especially with respect to that which is unspoken. Unspoken social etiquettes are full of problems: they are vague, change from person to person, and are usually only verbalized after we have broken one (or more) of them. This isn’t too big of a deal until we are in a relationship, want to deepen it, and we don’t know the rules. The truth is that relationships can get very messy. People are going to let us down and not everyone we are in relationship with is going to be as willing or able to work on it as we would like. There are going to be those who do though. When approaching relationships and life in general, we have to think with more longevity and with less of a demand for immediate satisfaction.

I have very few close relationships. Maintaining close relationships takes a lot of love, work, energy, and time. However, those relationships teach me everyday how it is that I am supposed to treat other human beings and to be aware of what it is that people need. As a result of those relationships I am better able to care about those I don’t know as well or at all. I believe that without intimate relational connections of our own, it is very hard to connect or care about those we don’t know around the world. When we hold everyone at arms length, it is much easier to hold the world’s problems at arms length as well.