human relationships

My best friend has been dealing with the impending death of her father which has been looming over her family for the past few months, and today, he passed away.  Talking with her through this process has brought up many questions concerning human relationships and how to deal with their impermanence.  We tend to put a lot of weight on our relationships and allow them to play a key role in our happiness.  We spend hours of our day contemplating, talking about, and acting on behalf of our relationships.  Yet, relationships are tied together with fragile strings that break and burn with ease.  If it is the fate of every human relationship to end, then why do we cling to them with such intensity?

Connections between beings are powerful teaching tools that allow us to learn more about ourselves through how we relate to others.  The fact that they are impermanent does not mean that we should never invest in them.  It simply means that we need to take a more realistic approach to their importance.  Allowing one or several relationships to control how comfortable or secure we feel in life, will inevitably leave us feeling vulnerable and scared.  We need to make peace with the fact that a relationship is not the be all end all of our existence.  They are beautiful additions to our time here and offer us more opportunities for self discovery, but they are not the only thing that defines us.

The process of my friend losing her father was more beautiful than painful.  She had the opportunity to tell him that he could leave peacefully knowing that he was not indispensable to her happiness.  She gave him freedom by letting him know that she could live just as happily without him here.  This is something that many of us forget to do for our loved ones who are still living.  Instead of telling them that we love their company but do not need it to be happy, we tell them that we could not live without them.  These words trap a person into a role too large for any person to fill.  No one can be there for you forever.  No one should be made the keeper of your happiness and well being.

The exaggerated importance of relationships has been made more apparent to me as I am approaching 30.  People always ask me if I want to get married and have children so that I can have a family of my own.  They give me ideas on how to meet men and reassure me with comments like, "you'll find the one soon."  But what if I don't need to find the one?  Most people assume that if you are not in a relationship, you must be looking for one, but why?  A relationship is not what will complete my life. Our society sees relationships as a solution to uncertainty.  They are meant to clarify our role in the world and provide us with stability.  But how can something that is inherently unstable be considered the foundation of our existence?  Of course I hope to experience love throughout my life, but I am not sure that I want it to fit our society's definition of relationship.  I am content being alone, and I hope that if I do find one person to love, that I will find stability from my own two feet and simply appreciate my partner for what he adds to my already complete and balanced existence.

je ne suis pas que Charlie

After being hurt by another, it is easy to become defensive and create a counter attack to protect oneself.  The ego tells us that someone has threatened our well being and that it must be defended.  We automatically put up the division of "us" and "them".  But who exactly is the "us" and who is the "them"?   What if we quieted our ego long enough to examine who is actually at fault and who will be hurt by a counter attack.  The truth is that we are all guilty of the crimes committed in this world and when we hurt another, whether the attack was justified or not, we are in turn hurting ourselves. 

France is devastated by the recent attack on "Charlie" and their reaction has been to spread the slogan "Je suis Charlie".  The words are not only carrying remorse for the victims but hatred towards the perpetrators.  The problem lies in the over generalization of perpetrator.  It has expanded to include a large portion of the Muslim population and immigrants.  This attack has fueled their desire to separate the Muslim population from their own.  Motivated by what they perceived as an injustice to their people in France the Muslims attacked the French journalists, but in the end, the greatest victim will actually be the Muslim population.

I had several French friends tell me that when they heard about the attack they cried all day for the victims.  I asked if they had also cried for the victims of 9/11 and of the terrorist attacks that happen in Africa and in the Middle East everyday.  They said that this was different because it was not only an attack on their fellow citizens, but on freedom of speech.  This got me thinking about my own reaction to tragedies.  Do I react with more remorse if something tragic happens to an American than I do if it happens to someone else?  Does it matter if the tragedy was motivated by a seemingly righteous cause?  

The same situation occurred in the U.S. after 9/11.  We saw ourselves as the victims of a horrible hate crime and in turn wanted to defend our country from the perpetrators.  However, in our counter attack, we made victims of more than just the guilty.  We labeled an entire group of individuals as suspect outsiders adding a constant challenge to their existence.  We used our own tragedy as a righteous cause to create more tragedies continuing the cycle of hateful acts.

The ironic thing about any attack, motivated or not, is that it makes victims out of us all.  There is never one guilt free party.  When one person is hurt, the world as a whole is hurt.  It is understandable that France is grieving the loss of 12 individuals, but it is not understandable that they would put more importance on this tragedy than on any other.  Just as it was not right for the U.S. to put more importance on our own tragedy of 9/11.  Our ego tells us that when we are attacked, we must defend ourselves, but to what end?  If we remove the idea of "us" and "them", then we can see that no body was attacking "us" and we can't fix it by retaliating against "them" because, in fact, we are both the "us" and the "them" and in hurting the other we hurt ourselves.

mother nature recreates the city

 The winter rain settled over Geneva creating a grey world lit only by city lights glowing from windows and reflecting off puddles.  It was hard to remember what the sun looked like and the city began to feel very bleak.  Some people adore cities in the rain finding it an added element of beauty to the already stimulating view.  I, however, found that it added to my feeling of entrapment in a world built by humans and lacking the refreshing perspective of nature.  The grey cloud hanging over felt like a bubble holding me into the city.  Growing up in the Colorado mountains made it difficult for me to find peace in the concrete jungle offered by cities.  There is beauty in architecture and manicured gardens but there is something unsatisfying about knowing that they were created by man and are not of the earth.  For me, true beauty lies in what is natural and wild.  Mother nature is a force uncontrollable by man and creates the worlds most breathtaking sculptures and backgrounds without the use of hands, making her the world's most talented artist. 

After a very cold night with winds that knocked at my shutters begging to break into my warm sheltered apartment, I ventured out for my usual walk along the lake.  To my great surprise, I found that mother nature had found her way into the city and had created a work of art out of the lake front.  The high winds had carried the lake water onto the shore and coated everything in its reach with a glistening layer of ice.  Every tree, twig, bush, blade of grass, and man made structure along the shore was frozen into a moment of peace.  The police had blocked off the iced over walk way, but I ducked under the rope and tip toed along the frozen ground crunching the delicately frozen grass.  I was sharing the moment with only a few other brave souls who risked breaking their tailbones walking across sheets of ice.  We all stood in amazement touching trees that were bending forward under the extra weight.  The park benches looked like cave walls with stalactites and stalagmites of ice.  Mother nature had successfully reminded us that not even city walls can keep her at bay.  She can recreate our world at her will turning an ordinary city into an icy wonderland.