Connection, Growth, and loud ideas

Connection takes work

Bad relationships are common, and good relationships are hard. Should that be a surprise to us? Being close and connecting with other people challenges every facet of our soul. - Stillness is the Key Page 143

I don't think anyone starts a relationship thinking they'll have a bad one. That they'll succumb to the siren call of ease, not talking about hard things, skipping connection because it requires part of you given to someone else.

We start relationships hopeful, that we'll find deep connection. Then we start focusing on the selfishness of our partner, while overlooking our own selfish acts, deeming them normal¹.

I don't remember where I saw it this week, but the gist of the question was, what will you and your spouse be after the kids have left? You've given so much to the kids over the decades they've been with you. It's likely that in the midst of this giving you've stopped really engaging with your partner about anything outside of logistics.

While my oldest is graduating high school this year, I still have a 10-year-old. I've still got at least a decade of helping a person become responsible for themselves, so the question becomes, how do I use that decade to make sure that, at the end of it, my wife and I are still connected in a way that will mean we stay together after?

Growth

I'm reading Jaron Lanier's book about deleting your social media accounts. As a computer scientist who had some hand in what the internet is today he writes about his initial enthusiasm for what the internet could be. It could connect people who don't have any connections locally. It could connect people from different groups so that understanding could flourish.

But the book also laments what the internet has become. Most people don't use the internet for growth and learning², they use it to doomscroll. They are influenced by companies that don't care about their well-being, they care about making money.

What would the internet look like if its only possible use was for growth? If the incentives for profit didn't pervade every interaction we have with what should be a wonderful tool?

The Loudest Voice

My aunt experiences great amounts of stress when my uncles get together at her house. Any discussion with my dad's brothers devolves into not quite yelling, but loud conversation. They seem to operate under the assumption that if you talk louder your point is more valid, so they all talk louder.

They love each other, but they also enjoy an argument. My aunt joined the family by marriage and didn't experience this type of discussion growing up. It stresses her out and then my uncle gets stressed out because his wife is unhappy. The funniest example of this is when he used the BBQ flipper like a catapult in his frustration and launched a burger off the grill into a neighbour's yard which stopped the very loud discussion (not argument) as everyone rolled on the ground laughing.

While it may be comical in my family, much of what we pay attention to is about who is the loudest. Who has the biggest platform. Who can command the most attention.

It's not about what is the best idea for society, but who can yell the loudest in a room so that others just give up and go along because no one is listening to them anyway. In this realm truth doesn't matter, the loudness is all that matters.