Every second of your existence is a trade of your precious and limited time for something. Unfortunately, most of you do not understand this reality until your time is running out.
If you are lying on your death bed right now and have accepted your fate, you will have the greatest clarity of what matter most to you.
As a species, the process is phenomenal in efficacy. In just 300 years, we have doubled the lifespan for the majority of the world population along with high standard of living as a bonus – if that is not “having the cake and eating it too”, what is?
As individuals within the species – most of us do not have the proper faculties to measure, understand and see our parts in the advancement of the hierarchical structure.
In the “How to Grow Your Relationship with Anyone, Anything, Anywhere and Anytime! Part 1”, we touched on the how you can prepare your “Self” to be in a relationship with anyone – specifically with a potential mate for life.
In this article, we will continue with the same theme and expand to include the career that you will take on to finance your life and eventually your family.
As stated at the beginning of the article, every second of your life is traded for something – it is the accumulation of all the trades that you and I call “your life” and “my life”.
For example from the time span of puberty to your mid 30’s, you are doing the balancing act with the search for a lifelong mate and a career that is in-lined with your unique potential.
The hunt for the basic resources to meet our basic needs as foremost and to meet the responsibility of the family to be is wired within all of us.
I am going be lofty and make this assertion to help with the discussion.
For hundreds thousands of years, the game plan for filling up the empty spaces was very simple and instinctual – survive to puberty, find a mate, procreate and die.
In the last 300 years since the start of the British Industrial revolution in the mid 17th century, the structure of the modern economy has elevated the majority of the world population out of the surviving mode into the higher standard of living.
Moreover, the life expectancy of the world population is doubled from mid 30’s to the low 70’s – meaning as a species, we have succeeded in the negotiation with Evolution/God for more time to fill up the scaffold.
Just as everything in life, the trades have to benefit both sides – hence the scaffold of our existence is slightly expanded to accommodate the potential within the population.
It is now – survive to puberty, find a mate, procreate, seek for a mystery endeavor and die.
The mystery endeavor can be lofty and philosophical in substance, but due to the advancement of the neurological science the last 50 years – it is now can be accepted as a substrate in the prefrontal cortex of the human species.
Just to be clear the mystery endeavor is not new. The first human being succeeded in the search for the mystery endeavor was the leader of the first civilization – meaning, the clan was composed of members of other human beings beyond the immediate family – mate and children.
Since the day of the first civilization, many of these mystery endeavors manifested themselves into the reality that you and I are currently living and experiencing.
The tangible mystery endeavors – Microsoft.com, the International Space Station, the Great Wall of China or just a plain old job that pays for the everyday cost of living.
The non-tangible mystery endeavors – the Civil Right Movement, the Equal Right Amendment, the Child Labor Laws or just plain old the satisfying feeling of you are taking good care of your family.
Collectively, all the mystery endeavors take the entire humanity one step forward toward progress. As a result, “Anything” from within that you would like to bring it into the world will require the collective efforts from others.
Let’s do a concrete example with the following time splits –
- Time interval 1 – span from puberty to mid 30’s
- Time interval 2 – from mid 30’s to the end of time
In the first interval, you are biologically wired to search out for a mate. And the mission is clear – procreation. What unclear is the mean for you to pay for the mission.
Simply put, if you are the young generation in this time interval – what are you going to do as a profession to pay for yourself, your mate and your children lively hood?
For a lion it is simple – learn how hunt to for antelopes. For you and the 7.53 billion of humanity, the answer is not so simple.
This is not a conspiracy theory. The reality is out-born from the social construct that assumed the entire of population falls within the normal distribution curve – if your father is a coal miner then it is very hard for him to see the Bill Gates in you.
Hence, the contradiction between you and the entire world on the outside grows – starting right at the puberty mile marker.
What is your life will be like in the first half of the lifespan is largely determined by what you do in the 10 years window starting with the first day of your puberty.
Within this critical 10 years, your biological system is hijacked by the surge of love hormones that the only two natural phenomenon that can compete with it are hunger and death.
Statistically, it is very rare for someone to die from loveless situation – it is not rare to find people die from hunger.
In the last article “How to Grow Your Relationship with Anyone, Anything, Anywhere and Anytime! Part 1”, I’ve asked you to step away from the Love Party for awhile and invest a little more time to understand your “Self”.
Once you have established the intimate relationship with your “Self” and have a clear understanding of its inner values – the mate and the career will no longer be fuzzy targets.
TheEngineer is going to give you an excerpt of my own life experience as a real life example.
Puberty came for me somewhere between 12 and 15 – and it was the sweetest life experience on par with three other events in my life – reunited with my mother after 20 years of separation, met my wife and the birth of my daughter.
I came to the States when I was very young. America is a land of the frees – built and maintained by all cultures from around the world.
As a result when puberty came, it is natural for me to attract to girls across the ethnics boundaries.
From high school to college, I had three steady relationships – a Caucasian America, a Korean American and a Vietnamese American.
Since I had invested quite a bit of time in the understanding of myself – one of the inner values that I would like to match is my mother. She is and still living in Vietnam and I would like for my mother to have the best relationship with my mate.
From the experiences, I decided that it was a Vietnamese American girl that I will marry as my lifelong mate.
The Vietnamese American girl I had dated in college is not my current wife, but I did married a Vietnamese American girl 1 year after I graduated from the college of engineering – she met all the inner values I came to have an intimate understanding by invested time to understand the “Self” from within.
In the 27 years of our marriage, is it all smooth sailing?
Absolutely not – all the pet peeves, all the core values for both of us were addressed right at the beginning of the relationship.
With that stable platform, we were able to overcome small imperfections that come in small doses – challenges and struggles as part of the colorful and vibrant tapestry of life.
I am going to wrap up this article with the illustration to emphasize that to have a relationship with the outside world – you must invest time in the relationship with your “Self”.
(Relationship – How to Grow Your Relationship with Anyone, Anything, Anywhere and Anytime! Part 3)
Let’s play the game of life!
