Tag: Relationships

Value as Human Being

Posted on by jabittan
Ezra Klein has had a few interesting conversations on his podcast recently that hit at the work we do and where we find value in our society today. On my way into work this morning, I was listening to an interview that Klein recorded with David Brooks. At one point Klein and Brooks discussed the shortcomings of our nation’s meritocracy, our system where the people who achieve the most, who become the most capable, and who have the right credentials and education are able to rise to the top. We align ourselves with people who are successful and claim that we are deserving of our success because we have put in the time to get an education and build the right experience to lead to where we are at now. Meritocracy is well aligned with our system of capitalism and ideally works to reveal who is worthy and deserving of praise and who is not.

 

What meritocracy misses, David Brooks argued in his interview, is any sense of moral or spiritual fulfillment. Meritocracy puts us in a position where we only find value in ourselves and others based on our achievements and outcomes. It narrows the scope of what is possible for us and our family. Any decision that does not clearly lead to a better economic position, a better career, and higher status is abandoned. Any friendships that can’t help us climb the social ladder or give us some future benefit are left behind. Praise and love are only given based on whether someone is working, what type of car they purchase, and what bumper sticker is on the back of the car. This works well with capitalism, but it doesn’t seem to work well in a cooperative society that depends on trust and love.

 

The biggest downfall of the system of meritocracy is that at any given time, our level of merit or success is not a permanent fixed quality. Success and status change. Basing our life and value on either will always lead to competition, frustration, and fear. “With wisdom, we understand that these positions are transitory, not statements about your value as a human being,” writes Ryan Holiday in his book Ego is the Enemy. We cannot put all of our faith in our accomplishments because we will find that we cannot be fulfilled with just our work and with just what we accomplish. If we look at ourselves and others as only being valuable and worthy based on the ideas in our meritocracy, we will look for things to critique all around us and we will fail to build meaningful connections in our lives.

 

Brooks argues that relationships are what give life meaning and make us feel fulfilled. If we can find a way to base our value as a human being on the fact that we are a human being who is capable of connecting with others in a social bond, then we can build more permanence into who we are and what we do. We can be more accepting of our failures and more honest about our success. Rather than defining us directly, our success can be something we share with those around us and something we use to help improve the lives of those around us. Our failures will no longer destroy our value as a person, and we can better accept and learn from our shortcomings, giving us a chance to be vulnerable and accept the support of those around us.

All Options Policy

Posted on by jabittan
What I really liked about Colin Wright’s book Some Thoughts About Relationships is that he focused on more than just romantic relationships. Wright examines how humans interact with each other within all types of relationships from romantic relationships with an intimate partner, to business relationships, to cordial but surface level relationships with the mail man. With so many possible relationships out there, Wright developed a framework for thinking about the multitude of ways that humans can relate to each other. He calls it the “All Options Policy”.

 

About the policy, he writes, “The key to understanding this policy is accepting that there’s no single moral, upstanding, golden model when it comes to relationships. There are as many valid relationship types as there are people, and it’s up to each of us to figure out what unique, specific shape ours will take.”

 

I really like this policy and wish we did more to apply this policy to our relationships and to build similar policies across our lives. I grew up watching too much TV, and I developed certain expectations about life, work, and relationships. These expectations were narrow in scope because they were based on what I saw on TV and were unrealistic because they were less about me and more about a performance for someone else. The way I grew up assumed there was a right way to act, behave, relate to others, and generally live. My mindset was the opposite of the “All Options Policy.” What’s more, this worldview was formed by scripted 30 minute tv segments, where reality, nuance, and true emotions were replaced by spectacle and overblown emotional reactions.

 

When we fail to recognize the variety in human life and experience we begin to force people into set boxes. We make assumptions and we try to live within a narrow range. Expanding that scope the way that Wright does with the All Options Policy allows for more creative and authentic human experience. We all have unique views and perspectives of the world, and we should expect that we will all have the capacity for developing our own ways of relating to the world and to other people. When we allow this to be the case, we can think deeply about what we want, expect, and need from our relationships with others, think about what other people want, need, and expect from us, and find a way to develop relationships with the people in (or potentially in) our lives. If we try to force relationships to be something that we think society, TV shows, or other people want our relationships to be, then we will never experience the rich complexity and individuality of human existence that the All Options Policy reflects.

Completeness

Posted on by jabittan
Relationships are complicated and can be approached from many different directions. No matter how you approach a relationship, however, you will be more successful and authentic if you can be a complete version of who you are. I previously wrote about Colin Wright’s views of “The One,” the perfect person who exists for you and exists someplace else in this world for the sole purpose of completing you. Wright explains that this idea is dangerous because it implies that somehow we cannot be happy, complete, and lead fulfilling lives unless we magically find another other person who is a perfect fit for us.

 

Wright closes out his chapter on “The One” with the following, “You are the one. You are the only person in the world who can complete and fulfill you, and ensure your happiness.” Continuing, “You are born complete, you die complete, and you decide whom you spend your time with in between.”

 

If we wait for the right person to come along to improve our life, open new doors for us, and make us happy, we will constantly be unfulfilled. Each person we meet will be judged along impossible dimensions of how well we think that person completes us. We won’t allow them to be complete versions of themselves, and we won’t be happy with the person that they are unless they somehow manage to meet every preconceived expectation we have for a partner who will fill all shortcomings.

 

To recognize that we are complete requires that we become aware of the pressures we put on ourselves, the stories we tell ourselves about what matters and what does not, and the motivations behind our goals and desires. Completeness requires that we be honest about how we spend our time and the choices we make. Without honest self reflection we cannot recognize what in our lives contributes to a sense of wholeness, and what distracts us from achieving what we would like to achieve to feel complete. Building in habits of self-reflection and awareness will help us to be a more authentic version of ourselves, and then we can better connect with others in our lives to have more meaningful and honest relationships where we can both be complete versions of ourselves.

Led Astray by the Idea of “The One”

Posted on by jabittan
In his book Some Thoughts About Relationships, author Colin Wright addresses a common idea that we carry with us and frequently see in romantic comedy movies. In dating relationships, we often have this idea that there is one perfect person out there in the world that is meant to be with us. Somewhere there is a person who likes just the right things, acts just the right way, and wants nothing more than to be with us. And all through our lives, fate is operating to bring us together as long as we do our best to seek out that one person’s love.

 

This idea is powerful and can be reassuring and motivating, but Wright explains that this idea can also be very harmful and have a negative impact on our lives. This idea, according to Wright, is also simply not true. Regarding this concept he writes:

 

“In real life, however, The One is a concept that isn’t just irrational, it’s potentially harmful. The idea that there’s someone out t here who is customized to make you whole implies that you’re not capable of being complete on your own. It also implies that everyone other than The One is just a stepping-stone toward grand fulfillment, which is a horrible way to approach relationships.”

 

My wife and I have had several friends who have had trouble finding a romantic partner with whom they would be comfortable settling down. It is a challenging process and one that is full of “what if” questions and situations that are hard for anyone to work though. One piece of advice we frequently give is that they need to be happy with who they are themselves before they try to become happy with another person. Asking someone else to be your other half and to complete you is an incredible ask of another person, and something no one can do. You cannot rely on another person to complete you and make you whole, because it would require them to be less of who they are in order to be more of who you are.

 

A better approach to relationships is to become fully yourself and learn to be comfortable with yourself and who you are before entering a romantic relationship with another person. You can then approach each relationship individually and develop a real and meaningful connection with another person. Abandoning the idea of the one, and being willing to accept more nuanced complexity in a relationship gives you a chance to let the other person be themselves and to let each other become a real couple, a more productive and realistic way to approach a relationship than as if you were looking for one perfect person to compliment you.

Nuances in What We Say and Mean

Posted on by jabittan
I really enjoy language. I listen to a podcast about language, Lexicon Valley, I studied Spanish for my undergraduate degree, and I’m currently learning sign language. There are a lot of ways to say the things that are on our mind, and a lot of nuance in how we say the things we want to communicate.

 

I find this fascinating, but it can cause real challenges for us in our relationships with others. Colin Wright in his book Some Thoughts About Relationships describes communication as “the mortar that holds together whatever structure you decide to build.” It is our communication which establishes and maintains our relationships with others and gives them meaning. The defining characteristics of our relationships can often be understood by the language and words we use. How we say something, the particular meaning we pull from a word, and the vocabulary we use all signify something about the relationships we have with others.

 

Complicating this is the nuance running through our communication. I’m in Reno, Nevada, and the way we speak is heavily influenced by trends in the San Francisco Bay Area. We speak a little bit differently than my fellow Nevadans in Las Vegas, who are more influenced by the language of Los Angeles. In his book, Wright encourages us to remember that there are many differences and nuances in the way we speak and use words. This is important to remember because these small nuances can change the meaning and definitions we attach to what people say and how we understand ourselves relative to others. He writes,

 

“Remember that everyone speaks a different language, and not just the English, Spanish, Japanese sense of the word. The vocabularies we use for things are different from person to person, and as such, incredibly important words like ‘relationship’ and ‘love’ and even ‘communication’ will mean something slightly, or vastly, different to each individual who uses them.”

 

For me, this is a reminder that I don’t know everything. I don’t know what is happening in another person’s head and I can never be perfectly sure that we are using the same word or phrase in the same way. We might be using the same word, but have a slightly different sense of what that word means. It is important that we are clear and concise with our speech and that we listen intently and ask clarifying questions when others are speaking so that we can better understand them and be more sure of the meaning we attach to what is said. This can lead to better alignment within a relationship, strengthening its overall ties and bonds.

Rational Relationships

Posted on by jabittan
In his book Some Thoughts About Relationships, author Colin Wright starts by examining what it means to be rational in a relationship. Often times we assume that relationships are built on emotional connections like love, fondness, and collegiality and we balk at the idea that we can bring a rational approach to a relationship or to anything that is driven by emotional feelings. Wright acknowledges the importance of emotions, but believes that bringing a rational approach to a relationship is key to having a successful relationship.

 

He describes rationality within relationships with the following, “Being rational in relationships means that you acknowledge cause and effect, the possibility of iterative improvement, and the potential to pull apart and assess problems to find solutions.”

 

Contrasting rationality is irrationality within relationships, which Wright describes as, “Being irrational means that you rely on a story line to make things right: that if you just believe hard enough, want it bad enough, or go through enough struggle, life will work itself out. No assessment possible, no change necessary.”

 

A rational relationship is one that requires awareness and requires that you get beyond your own perspective. You must interrogate your feelings and opinions and try to understand the thoughts, decisions, feelings, reactions, and behaviors of another person. Once you have worked through yourself and made an effort to view the world from the eyes of the other person, you must ask what factors contributed to the outcome you observed, and in a realistic and honest way ask how things could have been different in a different situation or if other factors had worked out a different way. Rational relationships are built on thought and observation which is challenging and requires concentrated effort to understand everyone’s needs, desires, feelings, and perspectives.

 

If we abandon these rational characteristics, we are left with the story we tell ourselves about the world. What we feel and what we believe is simply the way the world works. The problem is that our story and how we view everything the perspective from which we create our story is incomplete. A sense of injustice, insult, or injury is as serious as a direct threat on who we are. Our feelings constitute truth and the meaning we attach to certain things becomes iron clad.

 

The rational relationship steps back and pulls away the meaning we attach to events. It asks what happened, why did that happen, and how did everyone involved react? Was the outcome of the situation positive for all, damaging for me, threatening for others, or in some way less than desirable for all involved? If the view for any of these is that things could have been better, than a rational relationship rethinks how we interact and behave and seeks a way to improve the relationship for everyone, not just for ourselves.

 

If we choose to live our relationships without this rationality, we instead have nothing but what we tell ourselves and believe. We cannot change because we are simply stuck with another person who is the way they are and not capable of being anything different. The outcomes we face are unavoidable and people cannot be expected to improve their behavior unless you can fully change who they are.

 

Living irrationally is perfectly fine for an individual, but if we all approach the world in this way we will tear it apart. By bringing rationality to our relationships we can work better with other human beings to support their needs and to identify and build relationships that align with our needs and desires. We can better connect and recognize ways of interacting that further our connections and improve our interactions. Irrationality however, will create a world in which we are all building dishonest stories of the world to make us feel better about who we are or to create false narratives to make other people seem worse than they are. Each of us acting from our own limited perspective will have a net negative impact on the world as the micro-gravity of our own story pulls in and distorts the world around us.

The Value of the Person Next to You Right Now

Posted on by jabittan
I recently completed a Master’s in Public Administration and I spend a lot of my time thinking about government, governance, and the world of politics. One of the things I frequently hear in podcasts is how successful politicians have this ability to focus in on the people they speak with to truly connect to them, make them feel like they are the only person in the world, and earn their trust. Becoming a successful politician requires the ability to connect with others and it really stands out to us when we meet someone who can exceptionally connect with us and make us feel like the center of the world.

 

I think about this often because it is something I am actually not that good at. I want to be better at connecting with people and engaging with them more deeply and thoroughly. I want to be the kind of person that people think about and remember deep engagement with. The challenge for me is that I am often very distracted, and I don’t always do a great job focusing in on the moment and on the person I am speaking with. Luckily, Thich Nhat Hanh writes about ways of thinking that can help with my troubles in his book The Miracle of Mindfulness.

 

Hanh writes, “The most important person is always the person you are with, who is right before you, for who knows if you will have dealings with any other person in the future?” This quote is powerful because it reminds me that I don’t know when any given moment will be my last moment. It focuses on the only thing I have, which is the present moment, and reminds me to make that moment meaningful and valuable for myself and those whom I am lucky enough to interact. The quote alone is not going to change my behavior, but it can help me stay focused on the things which matter most, and that piece of mindfulness can help me think about my habits and the triggers that set me up to be focused or distracted.

 

Hanh continues, “The most important pursuit is making the person standing at your side happy, for that alone is the pursuit of life.” Looking beyond the person in front of you or speaking to you now to see who may be more interesting to talk to ruins your connection with the person in front of you. Thinking only of yourself and approaching another person as a transaction, as if you will only speak with them and give them your attention if they prove themselves worthy of your investment diminishes the quality of your relationships. When you instead treat other people as if  they were the most important thing in your life, you can become more connected with them and learn more about yourself and the possibilities of the world. This is what Hanh is describing when he says that making the person with you happy is the pursuit of life. Engaging with the person you are present with does not just look good for you, and it does not just make the other person happy, but it truly increases the value of the present moment and enriches the lives of you and the other person.

Asking Fake Questions

Posted on by jabittan
I’m not sure where it comes from, but for some reason we like to give advice by asking questions. It is so common that we see it on tv shows and in movies, read it in books, and I’m sure we do it to our children. We ask questions like “Have you thought about…”, “What about…”, or “Did you consider…” and even in the most recent The Black Panther movie there is a funny scene where one character says, “Why didn’t you…” to which the character she questioned had to respond, “Because we didn’t think of that.”

 

Michael Bungay Stanier in his book The Coaching Habit encourages us not to give advice by asking questions. The questions are not real questions and are more of rhetorical questions built to make us look helpful. Bungay Stanier would argue that in the end, these questions are not really us trying to get more information or clarification, but  just a way for us to be more subtle about the way we give advice. I actually think that the example above from the Marvel movie is a perfect example of why Bungay Stanier doesn’t like these fake questions. In the movie, the character asks her question, and the respondent has to admit that he was short sighted and when he does, the questioning character responds with smugness and a look that says “haha I’m smarter than you”. It is great for the movie and the characters involved, but our lives and relationships are not Marvel cinematic imaginations. We actually have to live with the people around us and cultivate meaningful relationships with them, and condescension and smugness through fake questions is not the best approach to building meaningful relationships.

 

“Stop offering advice with a question mark attached” is Bungay Stanier’s recommendation because the questions are meant to make the coach look smart rather than to help the person we are coaching find the answer they are looking for. He recommends that we ask probing questions to get the person we are speaking with to describe more of the problem or issue they are facing and to be more detailed in explaining what approaches and solutions they have tried. By getting them to further expand on their issue and listening longer, we may find that they have already tried the solution that we want to give to them wrapped in a comforting fake question. If we find that the person really has not considered our question, then we can give them our advice, but we can do it without the magician facade of a mysterious question that makes it look as though the individual simply missed the point and never considered the right thing. Bungay Stanier would suggest that we just give the advice and say, “I recommend xyz” or “one thing you have not mentioned is xyz, and in the past I have found that to work for me in these situations.” Ultimately, we want to avoid being in a place where our advice is not clear and where we elevate ourselves over another person when coaching.

The Organization of Effective Political Power

Posted on by jabittan
In the United States we don’t like the way our politics looks from the outside. We don’t like the fact that special interests lobby and seem to buy legislators. We don’t like that it is hard to have a voice and to have a say in what happens. We don’t like that political families seem to stay in power for long periods of time. Our primary solution to all of these problems is to try to make our country more democratic and to increase participation in our governing process.

 

We have focused on increasing participation because it feels like the right thing to do.  Increasing voter turnout and making it easier for people to vote is one solution we have pushed for in certain areas. Another strategy has been to encourage more political outsiders to run for office and for average voters to support candidates through individual donations. These strategies however, do not necessarily address the problem that we face with governance and the things about government that frustrate our public. It is possible for us to address the challenges of government by evaluating and changing processes, rather than by changing the mix of people who participate.

 

Jonathan Rauch looks at what can happen when government is directed by political amateurs rather than career politicians. He is skeptical that political amateurs can navigate the political landscape and build necessary coalitions to help move good legislation forward. Rauch quotes a New York University School of Law professor to demonstrate his fears of increased participation from political outsiders, “In the midst of the declining governing capacity of the American democratic order, we ought to focus less on ‘participation’ as the magical solution and more on the real dynamics of how to facilitate the organization of effective political power.”

 

Stability is underrated yet drastically important in any political system, and often times stability comes from relationships and coalitions within government. Political outsiders and amateurs are focused on specific issues and often brand themselves as being outside the normal relationships and spheres of influence within the political system. There are certainly times to inject politics with new faces and new relationships, but to continually stock legislatures with amateur politicians makes the overall process of governing more difficult and makes the organization of political power a greater challenge and battle. Changing the “who” of politics does not solve all of our problems alone.

Ignoring Other People’s Problems

Posted on by jabittan
Another section of James Comey’s speech shared in Cory Booker’s United stood out to me. Former FBI Director Comey spoke about racial tensions and the state of race relations in our country. He acknowledged the difficulty that many people have in accepting that there are racial challenges in our society today, and he was critical of the way people pushed the problem away from themselves. Most white people in our country today seem to discredit race problems, and often they don’t see a race problem as their own problem, and chose instead to ignore the problem all together.

Comey writes, “As a society, we can choose to live our everyday lives, raising our families and going to work, hoping that someone, somewhere, will do something to ease the tension—to smooth over the conflict. We can roll up our car windows, turn up the radio and drive around these problems, or we can choose to have an open and honest discussion about what our relationship is today—what it should be, what it could be, and what it needs to be—if we took more time to better understand one another.”

What Comey explains is that we prefer to drive past racial conflicts and problems, doing our best to ensure we never notice the inequality that has grown within our society. We ignore the problem and pretend that it does not effect us. Ultimately, this pushes us to a place where we live in our own bubble, reflecting our thoughts, beliefs, and views onto the world around us. We begin to assume that everyone has the same experience that we do, that everyone thinks the way we do, and that everyone has the same problems and goals. When this happens, we fail to see the challenges that other people face, and we fail to see the dangers of our nations current racial problems.

In a wold where we ignore the problems of others and focus only inwardly on what we want and what problems we have, we fail to see how our lives and actions impact our larger society. Comey’s quote hits directly at this problem. In our society we live complacently in our homes watching television shows that portray the life we want to live and show us what we want to see. We lose touch with the experiences of others and we may know there are problems in the world, but we don’t see how it is our responsibility to tackle those problems. We do not seriously understand the problems, and we don’t understand the people who face such challenges. Rather than try to better understand our world, we speed past people, problems, and inequity as we commute through life, and then we blame individuals for ending up in their situation, without ever offering a hand or any assistance.