Putting more thought into feelings...
People always use gardening metaphors to talk about interpersonal relationships. Cultivating them...letting them blossom, reaping their fruits. Indeed, the idea of cultivating relationships is an appealing one for me. It's such a methodical, controlled, slow process. Unfortunately my relationships are akin to operating a spaceship with no instruction manual.
With cultivation necessarily comes pruning. You prune the relationships that are not productive, that don't contribute anything to your life. And yet short of some sort of disaster, people usually don't. There is this overwhelming inertia when it comes to relationships that people are simply not willing to put up with in other aspects of their lives. And why? I've been asking myself more and more lately. Wouldn't it make so much more sense for me to focus my time exclusively on those whose company I enjoy the most? But I find that my days are filled with people who are simply there because they're there. Even when I gain no satisfaction from a particular relationship, I don't seek change.
Here's to a little more change and a little more focus.
With cultivation necessarily comes pruning. You prune the relationships that are not productive, that don't contribute anything to your life. And yet short of some sort of disaster, people usually don't. There is this overwhelming inertia when it comes to relationships that people are simply not willing to put up with in other aspects of their lives. And why? I've been asking myself more and more lately. Wouldn't it make so much more sense for me to focus my time exclusively on those whose company I enjoy the most? But I find that my days are filled with people who are simply there because they're there. Even when I gain no satisfaction from a particular relationship, I don't seek change.
Here's to a little more change and a little more focus.