Finding Meaning In Our Relationships
Imagine someone picking up a book, perhaps one of the great classics, but they cannot read. All they see is black squiggly lines on white pages. This book is meaningless for this person. Because it is meaningless it has no value and can easily be discarded.
Now imagine a highly skilled reader picking up that book. That same book now has a wide range of qualities that it didn’t have for the first person. There are characters and events that generate a complex and fascinating world of images and meaning and will probably generate a wide range of emotional responses that did not and could not exist for the first person. In this way it has become something much more, something very different, and something of much greater value.
If we think of our experiences of our self, of others, and of the world we live in as a book, people generally seem to be very poor readers. The information they are able to access is very limited, and therefore has little meaning and value. Let me be clear about what I am saying.
Most people, if asked, would of course be able to identify what they are thinking about, how they are feeling, what they are looking at etc.. But oddly enough, unless someone actually asks what we are thinking about, we tend not to notice. Herein lies the problem.
Only rarely, under certain circumstance do we actually become aware of where our mind is at. So this otherwise accessible level of understanding is typically restricted from our understanding. As a result, a great deal of possible learning opportunities are unrecognized and unavailable to us. The net result is that this information, as a source of knowing ourself, is generally not accessed and utilized by the average person.
As I have discussed in previous articles there are two primary relationships we need to learn about. The first relationship is the one we have with ourself, and the second is the one we have with others and our world. Learning how to pay attention properly is crucial to understanding of ourself and others and this idea will be discussed and expanded in the next several articles.