Okay, here's a post for you all. I must preface it with the fact that the topic on hand is NOT what has been driving me batty for the past several weeks!! It certainly has come up once or twice, but it's merely one of about a million and seventeen other thoughts and priorities and concerns that have been rocking my brain of late. ...So no jumping to conclusions, as I know some of you are wont to do. ;-)
It has come to my attention that relationships are hard. I'm not talking about dating or marriage or any of that romantic stuff. Just plain, old relationships. Friendships. Acquaintance-ships. Being academic or career colleagues. Interacting peaceably with coworkers. Being civil to individuals with poor customer service skills. Relationships are hard because people, unfortunately, aren't perfect. And they're hard because we can't control them, as much as we might try.
It is the "hardness" of relationships that makes me turn up my nose to them. It's not like school, which I comprehend quite well having spent at least 85% of my lifetime in some sort of school: in school, you get a syllabus, you get a text book, you get told precisely what you need to do to get what grade and to succeed. Not so with relationships. Each person is different, each has a different "grading scale," and NOBODY tells you what that grading scale might be. I don't mean that relating with people successfully means one must live up to others' expectations - I am simply saying that there are many, many unknowns. When I meet someone, the interaction doesn't even communicate, "Ah, I see! The goal of interacting with this person is to become friends." Unlike a new course on the first day of school, you don't walk into the meeting of a new person with a long-term vision. (Okay, well, sometimes people DO do that, but in reality there is absolutely no assurance of anything. Maybe the "semester" with this person will last for 2 years. Maybe 2 hours. Maybe 2 minutes!)
As the realization of the work and uncertainty of relationships slowly unfolded in my mind, me in my infinite wisdom declared internally to myself that I would not stand anything that was so full of unknowns. Certainly I would not want to embark on anything so completely complicated! Er...yes, this is a bit ironic coming from a PhD student trying to cure AIDS... Yet before I realized that irony, I realized that the DIFFICULTY of relationships is precisely the POINT of them! Without tough stuff to endure and work through, I don't ever get to know anybody very truly, and nobody else gets to know the real me, and I stay stagnant in my maturity and self-awareness. I am reminded of the classic song: "I am a rock, I am an island."
It is a pity that Rocks are oftentimes hailed as persons greatly to be admired. Those people who are stoic and self-sufficient and serene regardless of the circumstance. You can't hurt them. ...But...Rocks lack that important quality that separates humans from the rest of nature: humanity!
And so...I guess I'll give relationships a chance, even though I'll get an F in them sometimes. Better to go through something that is hard than to be hard. And quite often the most difficult hard thing about relating is - to take another line from the same artists quoted above - "the sound of silence." The whole waiting, wondering, waxing and waning about what's occurring with the alternate half of the relationship pair...that's what really gets me. Ah, me - I do hope that some day I'll be content in NOT knowing EVERYTHING.
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