The Only Thing of Real Importance in Life Is Relationship

All the striving we do in life seems so important at the time. Striving for money, which most of us are forced to do the majority of our lives in one form or another. That striving occupies our days, minds, hands, bodies. Like the food, water, shelter, clothing, and basic health which we require to live, we require money to obtain all those essentials.

Fame is another consuming pursuit. We may say we aren’t like the young creators fiercely seeking fortune and fleeting fame on Tik Tok, YouTube and other newer, faster highways to celebrity. However, even if we prefer to call it legacy, we writers are hoping to be remembered, or at least have people remember our words, even when they aren’t always attributed to us. We also don’t mind when money comes along with it. Don’t lie.

It’s in our human nature to create, to be occupied, to produce. We do it because our brains and brawn require movement and use. We also do it because the mind lives in the past and future but seldom in the present, and therefore wants to stay busy. It pulls us away from relationship with the people directly in front of us, to some limbo area of regret from the past, or fantasies of the future.

When our toddler tugs at us while we’re writing, cooking dinner, or doing something else that feels urgent, what’s actually urgent. Our oft repeated and “necessary” project, or the look in our child’s eyes when we gaze into theirs and pay actual attention?

How many work deadlines are actually important deadlines? Some, maybe, but others are arbitrary ones created by managers with no concern for your family and your time. Are those deadlines worth your partner feeling ignored and neglected? Especially when we meet the deadline and nobody takes our project to move it forward.

In one of my mother’s last phone calls to me, she apologized for bothering me because she knew I was busy. I was. I was presenting a training the next day and hadn’t finished writing my introduction. She wanted me to talk to my niece about what seemed to my mother to be a controlling relationship.

I could have told her I was too busy. I almost did. Instead, I decided to listen to her concerns and agree to be available for my niece. Mom died unexpectedly a few days later. I’m so glad I didn’t tell her I was too busy to talk.

A young man I took in when he and my son entered high school texted me three years ago. We communicated rarely by then. I had moved closer to where my son went to college two years after they graduated high school. He thanked me for everything I’d done for him. He said he wished he’d paid more attention to what I tried to teach him. I was deeply moved. He’s always been strong-willed, but quiet, tough to talk with, and likely depressed.

I texted back, thanking him for letting me know how he felt, and asked if he was okay, or needed to talk. He said he was okay, just realizing what mistakes he had made. I told him I’d made mistakes, too, and that I believed in him.

He was murdered two years after that. It turns out he had been shot at a day or so before he texted me. That scare got his attention, but it didn’t stop him from continuing to sell drugs. Could I have prevented his death if I’d insisted we talk more that day he texted? I’ll never know, but I do wish I’d tried harder to keep the communication going.

Sometimes as our children grow into adulthood, we walk a tightrope between too much reaching out and too little. Like my mother before me, I don’t want to bother my son while he’s busy. So I send him Bitmojis, random texts, articles he may or not ever read, and little up-dates. To his very great credit and my delight, he does the same. It may help that we are both creators. Also that he is an only child. I think it’s primarily that we are good friends. We genuinely like each other. We have wicked and even twisted senses of humor. Don’t know where he got his.

I moved from Fort Worth to Austin seven years ago. For a year, I went back once a month to see a few clients, to stay with my sister, and to hang out with friends. Later, those visits became farther apart, and because not all of my friends are friends with one another, I was often spread thin, and didn’t get to see all of them each visit.

Then COVID hit. Suddenly, like all of us, I couldn’t go to Fort Worth whenever I wanted. I went months without seeing my sister, and now over a year and a half without seeing my other sister who lives further away. One friend and I began texting much more often, with the occasional phone call when we were both free.

Since I’m a therapist, I’m seldom free during the days. Even though I no longer work nights or weekends, my days are full.

One of my other best friends is also a therapist, and for no reason either of us understands, we’ve chosen opposite days off. I miss her terribly. We did start virtual “happy hours,” during COVID, that usually lasted three hours or more. She is my touchstone and my resting place, although when we’re together there isn’t much resting happening. Laughter and dancing, yes, but not much resting.

Now that we’re both vaccinated, and the U.S. is opening up more, she gets to spend more time with her granddaughters at their volleyball tournaments, and I visit my son in California. She and I have yet to reconnect in person, though, and I feel more of a loss about that than I did during our three hour virtual visits.

During that time of lockdown, one member of a family who has adopted me, my son, and my sister for holidays, went to the hospital with, you guessed it, COVID. He, being the stubborn man he is, survived. I got to hug him recently after not seeing the family or celebrating any holidays with them in over a year. I’m not sure a hug has ever felt that good. Another friend of all of ours died of the virus at home during that same time.

I’m currently on a beach trip with a friend I made just prior to lockdown. She became my COVID buddy. She invited me on this trip with her and three friends she’s had for over twenty years. One is a friend of over thirty years. I was worried I’d feel left out in their midst, but that’s only happened a couple of times, and mostly in my own head. I’ve made an extra effort to get to know each of them separately during the trip, and they’ve been most welcoming to me.

Two of us, my buddy and I, are single (divorced). Two are married, and one is a widow of a little over a year. Two of us suffer from depression. Together, the five of us make a formidable crew. At dinner tonight, the recent widow lifted her wine glass and said with tears in her eyes, “I’m so grateful to all of you for being my friends.”

Through everything, loss, financial gain, work struggles, education, raising children to the point where they can leave home and take care of themselves, retirement, fame, fortune, reversal of fortune, up to and including a world-wide pandemic, the only thing that ever really matters is relationship. How would any of us have survived the last year and a half without relationships; virtual, in person, or in loving memory?

You don’t have to wait for a pandemic or a loss to embrace the joy and comfort of relationship with others. When a parent calls during work, take fifteen minutes to talk. I promise you the world of work won’t end.

When your child tugs at you, turn away from what you’re doing and look into their eyes to listen. You’ll assure they grow up with healthy self-esteem, and you won’t burn dinner or miss a writing deadline. Even if you do, it will be worth it.

If your partner needs you, take a few minutes to listen or cuddle or reassure. There really is noting more important than helping someone feel loved.

When you have a sense that someone who looks up to you needs your direct and immediate interaction, act on it. Don’t let them slip away by giving you mild assurances that they are “okay,”

Keep up with friends. Social media is a huge help in this aspect, especially during the last year and a half when we genuinely couldn’t see then in person. Now that you may be able to visit in person, make an effort to do so.

A Purdue University study about social relationships and wellbeing states, “Even though the effects are small, they are robust and reliable across different studies, as well as other domains of well-being. There may be no single secret to happiness but there may be a recipe, and, if so, good social relationships would be one ingredient.”

On a higher plane, we truly do only have ourselves and our relationships. If all the spiritual teachers offer any truth, it’s that we need one another and must love one another. Not just for happiness but for survival. Ours and that of all humanity.

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This post was previously published on P.S. I Love You.

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