We can boil all things in this world down to one thing, relationships. Human beings can attempt to make things as complex, complicated, or dramatic as they want; but at the end of each day the thing we care about the most and need the most are the relationships we have with others. The feeling of being desired, wanted, important, and interconnected is vitally important to each of us.
I once heard that the Holidays, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, had the highest rate of suicides; why is that? We can joke and say it’s because people don’t want to be around their families, but it is because the Holidays remind us of where we are in life. It’s that “slow down” time to reflect on where we are, so that often brings depression, therefore suicide.
I say all this to lead in to my point, which is we each, as individuals, must strive to be better every day at building and preserving relationships. It is the key to happiness, family, friendships, and business. Speaking only about me, when I look back and see times where I was not cultivating relationships well I was typically “too busy”. More often than not though, I think there is a fear of putting yourself out there, fear of possible rejection.
I read a blog post recently that said something like, “how do you expect to get anything if you don’t ask for it”, which they explained quite well. We get caught up into our day to day stuff with a million things to do, sometimes you need to ask (remind) people for whatever it is you are in need of because waiting for them to notice most likely won’t happen. The great thing about people though, is that most of them, most of the time, want to help.
That’s why I go back to the importance of relationships and communities; we need to be able to help each other, to listen, to engage with the people that are on this journey with us.
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