THE PROS AND CONS OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS

THE PROS AND CONS OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS

I had an “aha moment” the other day! It’s probably something that every other human being on the planet already understood... So, I’m just a little slower than most.

I’m still trying to get my brain fully around it, but as far as I can appreciate it at this point, it seems that almost all that’s good in life, and almost all that’s difficult in life is intrinsically and interdependently related to our relationships with each other. Relationships with our families, our neighbors and friends, work colleagues and church family – all of our interpersonal associations.

It may seem trite, but it’s true – it turns out that in life, relationships are everything!

And, like it or not, we need these relationships with each other. And equally important, we need both sides of these relationships – the good and the not so good. Tell me if this holds water…

Relationships are complicated. They can be the source of feelings of ecstasy – the “I’m on the top of the world and nothing can stop me!” and they can be the source of unbearable pain – the gall of bitterness and “I just wish it would all end.” In this life, most people have the privilege of experiencing thousands of stops along the infinite spectrum of emotions found on the vast highway of human relations. What a blessing the reality of this epic realization!

In relationships, the good comes with the bad. It’s a given – maybe even a universal law of nature. With all relationships there’s a wonderful intermingling of opposites, a magical blend of both joy and drama, love and pain, excitement and boredom, comfort and anger, inspiration and frustration. It’s both encouragement and discouragement, kindness and meanness, dreams and nightmares, compassion and cruelty, hope and despair. It’s a mixture of laughter and tears, compromises and disagreements, truths and untruths, heaven and hell, successes and failures. It’s a blend of sanity and craziness, grace and thoughtlessness, intimacy and conflict, triumph and tragedy, health and sickness. It’s both ups and downs, both sweet and sour – it’s the ease and the complication of a million times a million emotional aspects of fragile, unique human relationships. It’s life! It’s the fabric of what life is made of!

Achieving and maintaining good relationships takes real effort. It’s hard work. It requires continuous, meaningful attention from both parties. We need to work on them all the time. Because, when neglected, relationships suffer. They don’t improve or repair themselves. Relationships, left unnourished, like all things in mortality, fall under the unforgiving umbrella of the Second Law of Thermodynamics – ‘entropy’. They disintegrate, they decay, become disorganized. Some might even say, they rot!

The good news… there’s a ‘glass half full’ side of every characteristic and every relationship! The value and proportion of every emotion can not only be learned and enhanced, but also strengthened or minimized for the better. It’s a lifelong process of self-awareness; of self-improvement and being conscious of those around us and the impact of our words, choices and actions on them (and on ourselves). It’s a process of learning from our own mistakes and successes – as well as learning from the errors and accomplishments of others. It’s a process that requires patience and forgiveness, faith and temperance, and the tenacity to press ever onward, ever upward.

The beauty of it all is one of the grandest gifts that God has given to mankind. The ability, really the opportunity to create something of immeasurable value – something that transcends both time and space. The prospect of consequential improvement, of perpetual growth, toward an eventual brushing-up against the qualities of Godlike conduct.

Relationships can be both wonderfully rewarding and extremely challenging. But the heart of the matter is that God has given us the ability to make something of infinite worth and of eternal providence out of every aspect of every relationship. It is a significant part of the test of mortality – a part that will help  us hone our characters as we work on applying the admonition of the Savior, the Master of relationships, when He taught His followers from the Sermon on the Mount: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

May our relationships be treated with great importance, and may they prosper, producing fountains of perpetual joy!

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Wm. Calvin Hughes  |  Lake Elsinore, California  |  June 25, 2015

Happy Birthday Mom, Grandma Marks and Baby Kado!