Why relationship is hard to understand?
As a trained engineer, 2 + 3 = 5 worked very well and satisfactory for my understanding in many aspects of life from the areas of cutting edge medicines to the front line of innovation in technologies.
The one exception is relationship – as it turned out 2 + 3 = ±5, in some situations it is more than five and in others it is less than five – it seemed from my personal experiences over the years.
The numbers on the left of the equation represented the investment of resources and the answer on the right is the return for the investment.
Relationship is not a tangible object that can be divided and dissected into smaller components for rigorous examination in the same way as the human body or all the atoms of the physical world.
Although it cannot be seen, touched, smelled, tasted or heard. It has all the characteristic of an organic matter – the beginning, the growth and the ending.
For example, it is an established fact that you can reference specific date and place when you first met your mate – the beginning of the relationship.
As time went on, the quality of the relationship can be quantified better or worse in comparison to the first day.
Finally, no relationship last beyond the deaths of the participants.
It is complex and hard to understand because it existed outside of the five senses that we are relying on daily basis to navigate and make necessary adjustment in action and behavior – in accordance to the external stimulation from the environment.
There are millions of things in the physical world that existed outside of the human senses – infrared, sound below 15 Hz, air molecules are few examples.
To overcome the limit in human senses, scientists built tools to assist extend the capability of the human faculties – only then we recognized there are many things exist outside of our five senses.
Unfortunately, they have yet come close in building a tool that can accurately determine the quality of the relationship between two people.
Just to be clear, the presence of the tool does not guarantee a successful relationship or the assurance of the satisfaction of personal connection.
For instance, there are readily available and easy to understand financial tools at anyone disposal with high degree of accuracy. Yet, not everyone is financially successful or happy with his or her financial standing.
The factors that further compounded the complexity of the relationship are the participants themselves.
Each participant came into the relationship with all the unresolved baggage that has accumulated over the years.
Blemished childhood experiences!
Puberty loves and heartaches from failed relationships!
The up and down and the uncertainty in work and career development!
With all the complexity within each participant, the paired up often brings on the summation of the baggage that often outruns the benefit that comes with relationship.
This is why as we get older, it is harder to be in a relationship with others.
Relationship is complex. However, it does not mean you have to understand it in details to have it in your life.
For example, there are many engineering details of a typical car that is loaded with technological innovations beyond most owners’ understanding. The complex details do not stop anyone from the acquisition, operating and experience the owning and driving of the car.
As the world population is stepping into the 21st century, the rate of illiteracy is declining. The demand for cerebral experience as oppose to intuition in all aspects of living is a paramount.
The need for a clearer understanding of relationship is evident in highly developed countries where the standard of living is far above the hand to mouth living in comparison to other parts of the world.
Relationship is not physical in nature. It will remain elusive and complex in detail. However, relationship is organic in character – it can be constructed, cultivated and experienced just as any tangible matters in the physical world.
A successful relationship in the 21st century requires the conscious investment of time, money, sincere effort and an easy to understand metric as the feedback for the investment.
It can be expressed in the the linguistic mathematical form as: time + effort + money = relationship.
Time is the critical component in all possible realities. The Universe is approximately 14 billion years old. The earth is 4.5 billion years old. Everyone within the current 7.5 billion of the earth population has an age – time gives rise to the existence of all these realities.
The organic characteristic of relationship grows with a given time frame.
For example, every single one of us has the experience of meeting someone for the first time. Then something grows within ourselves the more time we invested in that person. In some cases where the person is no longer present due to separation or death – we miss him or her.
That is why time is an essential ingredient in the building of relationship.
Effort and money are the catalysts that speed up the time for the formation of relationship.
Effort is the selfless thought, action and behavior that demonstrate the person’s desire to live in the world beyond the circle of “self” – wanted to be connected.
It is the demonstration beyond words to the other person that he or she is mean something to you.
Many of the efforts require money to execute – a meaningful gift, a memorial vacation, a relief of financial hardship.
Lastly, the metric that measure the return on the investment of time, effort and money is the relationship – quantity and quality.
The numbers of friends and family a person have that are willing to share the joy, the sad, the up and the down of life experiences is the absolute measure of relationship.
If the number is less than one, the additional investment of time, effort and money is warranted – it is no difference than the built-in biological hunger that reminds a person to go and find food.
Relationship is elusive, complicated and convoluted because it cannot be seen, taste, hear, smell or touch.
Relationship is elusive, complicated and convoluted because by definition it is a summation of at least two separate persons – whose private selves are perplexing on their own.
Relationship is not physical in form, but it is discoverable, cultivable and a pinnacle of experience in its fullest form.
Time, effort and money are the essential building blocks of a relationship that is worthy of an existence.
Let’s play the game of life!
