HW # 52 - Initial Theories of Human Relationships

Our whole life long we are moving in and out of relationships. The good ones last, and it’s important that they do. They are a way of keeping the past a part of your life so that you aren’t just stuck in the present. Good memories are better if you have people to share them with. And it’s good to have someone to share the not so good ones with too.

Relationships start early. Unless we are really unlucky we are all born into families. Before we know it we are in school, especially preschool forming relationships with a teacher and peers. I started preschool at three months old. I actually still know a kid who started at my preschool when I did. We have had a relationship longer than we can remember, literally. It’s a great thing that we can both remember the giant jungle gym and both practically killing ourselves for jumping from the top and having the teacher call our parents at work to come meet us at the emergency ward.

My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. A. to our class, is retired, but I still run into her in the neighborhood. She can never believe that I am taller than she is because I will always be this wild little three foot high person to her. She says that she still has a picture I drew of her as a bird on her refrigerator. It might not really be there, but I like thinking that it is.

Then there was Nan O’Shea, my favorite elementary school teacher. She taught third grade, and we had a kid in our class who, if we had been old enough to think about we would unanimously would have predicted would become a terrorist. This kid was so antisocial that his mother had to sit in the back of the class for the whole second half of the year. I remember that we had a parents’ day when we had our work out on our desk, and he drew a toilet on all of our notebooks. He had to write the word “toilet” underneath so you could tell what the drawing was.

Relationships give stability to people’s lives so it’s a good thing to make an effort with them. I think that maybe relationships are a good sign of how a person lives his or her life. To have strong ones it seems to be helpful not to be too self-centered or arrogant or envious. People have to like you for yourself not for someone you are trying to be. That is too confusing. Being yourself and just trying to develop your own strengths no matter what they are and valuing other people for their strengths is a healthy way to go through life. All of these characteristics – not being too self-centered, not being arrogant, not being envious, and sharing are good for nations to have as well as people. Governments are often arrogant with disastrous outcomes. The Shah of Iran was an arrogant guy who had all this oil money and spent none of it on his people, and he had a nasty death squad. So there was a revolution, and now crazy religious fundamentalists in power. The U.S. is afraid of Iran’s capability for nuclear weapons. But the U.S. was the great supporter of the Shah because he was our friend in the Middle East where all the oil is. The U.S. didn’t care about the people of Iran when the Shah was in power. It was only thinking about it’s own selfish needs. It never pays to be really selfish and uninterested in other’s needs. This seems to me to be ethical conduct that wins friends, keeps away enemies, and benefits humanity as oppose to blowing it up.