Author Archive
On the nature of relationships
I have a friend who is going through some tough times at the moment and, during the course of some email tennis, there are a few paragraphs that I think bare repeating.
Would you change him, so that you could keep him? If you were to forgive what seems unforgivable (and believe me, it is forgivable, but maybe not just yet) and continue from roughly where you left off, what would you have to change, in your deeply held beliefs about relationships, so that you could REALLY be back in the relationship?
A lot huh?
About the same amount of things you’ll have to change to have your next serious relationship with whomever comes along.
Coupled with…
Know that when you are in a relationship, you choose to be in it and there will always be unexpected stuff coming at you. It is the nature of a relationship between two (or more) people that things will not go “as planned” and so, as you get more experienced with being in relationships, you stop making plans and stick to a generally agreed upon “basic outline” that can be reviewed at any time all members are together.
It has taken me, personally, ~15 years to figure this out and, while I think I’ve got it mostly worked out, I know that I could also have it completely wrong. While I am not exactly “fine” with that, I am okay with the idea that it doesn’t matter so much, as long as I am willing to throw out my old ideas and learn something new when the situation requires it.
I don’t really have much to add, outside of the context of the situation, other than: Relationships are curious things, the more I have the more I realise how much more there is to learn about them.
So here we are, end of the year and it’s time to check back on the stated objectives and their results. I picked up this idea via The Art of Non-Conformity, although it’s a common enough theme at this time of year.
The high-lights
- Got married!
- WAAPA
- Nine, the musical
- Survived school and The Gum-nuts
Other successes
- Shopping for clothes (in the second hand/recycling boutiques of the world)
- Housing arrangements (We have two, still)
- Conversations on the increase (arguments are on the decline)
- Emma paid off huge chunks of her loan (in fact, it’s all gone now because I was sick of listening to her whinge about how impossible everythingnwas going to be while the loan loomed large above her)
Stuff we hope to learn something from
- Getting hot makes things difficult for us.
- Family is great.
- Just cause you didn’t get the job doesn’t mean your life is over.
Unmentionable things like
- The fact that I still haven’t got around to building the amazing web app I intended to make this time last year.
- Emma is getting shorter, or more precisely, continues to wear flat shoes more often than I would like.
I was having a conversation the other day about the difference between Novice and Advanced students. It was about getting the results you are after. We were initially talking about martial arts, but the idea holds for everything you do in life. Or don’t do, as the case may be. It went a little something like this:
In the beginning, the student asks many questions. Many, many questions, but they all centre around a similar theme: I am a Novice, therefore; I don’t know what I am doing; everything I am doing must incorrect; I need to be told what to fix until I accidentally get it right, because I am a Novice, therefore; I don’t know what I am doing….
it’s a nice circular argument in which many of the axioms are supported by the actions of the student. The student IS a beginner. They ARE forgetting what they are supposed to be doing. The results they DO get are not what they expected. The Novice student spends so much time focusing on not doing the required work that they cannot possibly succeed. In fact, this is such a well known phenomenon that many advanced students say, “you will learn this (technique) much faster when you are totally exhausted”.
If you continue to train when you are exhausted, you don’t have the spare energy to question what you are doing, you just do it. The mind of the Novice needs to be quietened so that actual learning can commence. It is under these conditions that the advanced mind-set can be learnt.
Advanced students have a different angle: I know what I am doing, but it hasn’t worked yet. What more do I need to do to make this work?
I call this the 30-70 rule.
If you don’t have the results you want, regardless of how much work you thought was required to get them, you actually have 30% to go. Always. So compare your actual results with the results you want and make a decision: Do more? Or be happy with less?
If you only completed 70% of a race you wouldn’t expect to win it, but what if the race was longer than you thought when you started (or any point along it)? Adjust your expectations, results or input, it doesn’t actually matter, as long as you realise they are linked.
Ask yourself, how is it that successful people succeed? Do they stop before attaining success, or after?
So, if you don’t have the results you want, when are you going to finish that last 30% off?
Why aren’t you doing it right now?
Yes. Now.
What a difference an oven made
Twenty-four little notes
Brought the buns and the power
Where there used to be blameMy yesterday was stew, dear
Today I’m using you, dear
My frypan nights are through, dear
Since he said you were fineWhat a difference an oven makes
There’s cookie-dough before me
Skies above can’t be stormy
Since that moment of glee, that thrilling degreeIt’s heaven when you find roast on your menu
What a difference an oven made
And the difference is you
After finally calling an electrician to come look at the oven, they have replaced the $75 thingo around the back that had melted and it’s working perfectly. Now I’ll just start baking some muffins so that when Emma gets home she will be greeted with the small of baked goods…
This one is quite funny to write; I remember having a similar issue when this happened to me and so it echoes quite nicely.
For a while now I have been encouraging Emma to keep an eye out for cheap flights to places we might like to go. For holidays, as opposed to places we might like to go to get away from the in-laws, which would be a completely horrible suggestion and totally unwarranted. “Hello to Emma’s family”, I know many of you read this :-)
So, over time, we have had the occasional conversation about dream holiday locations, logistics and timing. Largely these took the form of a tentative suggestion that could be construed as something completely different (have you ever wanted to go to Disneyland) which, upon further investigation, rapidly descended into either hurt silence or stomping footsteps towards a door. Oh, it wasn’t just her. We swapped roles at regular intervals.
So it was quite a surprise to get a jittery phone call from Emma that started out with, “Honey, I’ve found some flights to Paris next year that look really good, can we go?” i would like to say that i answered suavely, “Sure, Baby, what ever you want”, but that would be a misrepresentation of the facts. There was some confusion as we tried to fall back into the old pattern, but after realising what was happening, I tried a different tact and, within 24 hours, Things Were Different!
Emma had figured out the connecting flights, arranged a stop over and paid (with my plastic to get the travel insurance) for the entire escapade.
I’m pretty sure she is still not quite sure when the piano will fall on her, but it’s very amusing to watch her try to get grumpy now. All I have to do to dislodge any cranky is start humming the French National Anthem.
And now she is starting to think that maybe, just maybe, things will turn out alright for her after all.
Highly, HIGHLY amusing.
