F for FORM (SHAPE)
29. 04. 2024
How we shape ourselves in society, how we look at society. And here I must mention tradition. I am a traditional person, with a great sense of new scientific knowledge and human progress. Tradition means the knowledge that has accumulated throughout the history of mankind, it means all the records that have ever been made by man and remain living memories of an event, it means the preservation of rituals that ennoble man and give him meaning in some way. Rituals that are preserved are something that one takes deep down as one’s own, even though one may not understand them very well. Sticking to a ritual, whether it is a Sunday lunch at the family table or a weekly board meeting at the company, produces results, gives meaning. But only if we approach them with all our heart, with all our sincerity, and if we persist. When do you know you love a person? It doesn’t just happen in the moment, it’s not the date or the hour of the moment, it’s persistence, it’s several little things that give you the feeling that you love someone. You spend your whole childhood with your family members, and that perseverance gives you that feeling.
In the recent past I have been involved in personality profiling. A kind of shape of me, what I am, what I have been shaped into and who I have become. To be honest, I am not very keen on that sort of thing. But nevertheless, when I was presented with the results, it was immediately clear to me that this was me. That I had been given a mirror of myself, a form of me. I can say that I had a good laugh at what a good description of myself I got. Not that I didn’t know myself, but it is still interesting to read the results in a different form. Last but not least, I have given a profile to a person who means a lot to me to read and she says it is a hit. That it is me. I have somehow changed my mind about these things because they give you a different perspective, they make you think. Where can you improve as a human being, what are the areas where you are not doing well and what is good and you point that out, you do that. In all relationships, it is how people feel around you that matters, not how you feel. If others feel good, chances are you will feel good too. The reverse is not necessarily true if you feel good yourself. Finally, I recently heard a good thought: ‘A man eliminates the persons in his life who limit him in his development, in his growth’. And unfortunately, in my opinion, some persons remain in their youth, they do not grow in their way of thinking. You do what you think, you behave what you think, you speak what you think, you express what you think. What you think is what you are.
The relationships we experience in our lives roughly take three main forms. The first, which we are in some way forced into, are relationships that relate to our shared activities. Social or community relationships. As citizens, for example, we have relationships with other citizens because we are bound by common laws, common principles, common values… These are relationships that we often do not pay enough attention to. For example, we only become much more aware of our relationship with our personal doctor when we are ill. Other types of relationships, mostly related to our careers, can be called collaborative. Collaborative relationships. The first and the second could be said to be opportunities, a form of opportunity. After all, the Slovene language has a beautiful saying (another fine example of a tradition that is being preserved). A suit makes the man. Having said that, we often ask ourselves why do we judge by appearances? How else are we to judge a person when we first see them? How? All the people we know we once saw for the first time. I see the saying in this way, in this sense. If I approach a person with sincerity and am prepared to commit myself fully at the first moment, with all that I have and all that I am, to that relationship – whatever it may be – then the first impression is important. Very important. By dressing up, one shows one’s values, one’s respect for the person one is going to meet, the person one is going to get to know. I have recently proved to myself again that first impressions really do matter. A rosette really does make a first impression on a woman. A deep first impression. I am aware that it is possible to play it, to learn how to make a good first impression. That is also part of respect, for a partner in life, in business, in society, anywhere. Sooner or later, it turns out that you can play for a while, but certainly not for a long time.
Thirdly, there are the relationships in personal life, which are also the most important for human beings as sentient beings. This is where material goods lose their luster, although there are many people who think otherwise. Unfortunately. That is why we often neglect these relationships too. And with the people we love the most. At some point, we regret it. The longer we put it off, the harder it is, the greater the regret later. When a sister or brother with whom we did not have the best relationship dies, it is only then that we realize that we did not do more to improve that relationship. It takes so little. Nowadays, people are a phone call away. All obstacles can be jumped if we approach with serious intent and persevere.
All relationships develop at different times in human beings, so in childhood we first learn about relationships in our personal lives, then through the education system we develop relationships linked to shared activities, and finally those linked to cooperation. Of course, all these relationships have different meanings at different stages of life. Every relationship with another person is based first on a relationship with oneself. That is why we often unconsciously look for patterns in our relationships with others that we felt in our childhood in our relationships with our parents or family. Relationships are unconscious experiments that happen to us throughout our lives, whether we want them to or not. Attitudes to work are not directly related to relationships between people, but indirectly they are a big factor in relationships with others. Attitudes towards work are developed at a basic level in childhood or youth, but it is difficult to develop a completely different attitude towards work later on. Physical work. Mental work is basically no different from physical work, because physically all work requires energy. The more energy we put in, the greater will be the effect. That is why we need people to think more, we need more awareness as a society. You never know what circumstances another person is in. Sometimes we cannot even imagine what they are going through. But we judge anyway, we are quick to judge, too quick.
The relationship is like a wall. Each cornerstone is important because it is a piece of the whole wall. And if one stone is not neatly or properly worked, it stands out from the whole and causes irregularities in the subsequent construction as the wall rises. That is why it is a key task for all of us to help and set an example for others. This is where the me-you-us-all relationship, or the form of the relationship between the individual and the community, comes into play. The willingness to help each other must be mutual, so if there is no willingness on one side, the relationship will not work or will not last. From this point of view, choice is very important for relationships. And again, we come back to the first impression. We rarely ever check the person with whom we enter into a relationship, except perhaps in business, where we pre-assess the situation through risk and take some action. Otherwise, we rarely do it, at least not consciously. We kind of jump in the water. Sincerity as a relationship factor is crucial in relation to the duration of the relationship. In principle, there is a feeling among people that the longer we want a relationship to last, the more honest we need to be. Personally, I don’t quite like that idea because honesty has to be full, unconditional. From the very beginning. We have to go all-in in the relationship. I find the oath of the American courts interesting: “The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”. There is more to it than meets the eye, because for me, truth is not inversely proportional to lies. Truth is not even the same as sincerity, but it is nevertheless an interesting reflection on a kind of three-layered oath. Personally, I also like Abraham Lincoln’s statement: ‘You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time’.
Finally, I have been searching for a comparison that would describe all the factors of human relations in a more plastic way. The best comparison seemed to me to be the pyramid. The sides of the pyramid represent different relationships. On the lower side, there are the relationships in personal life, because these are personal and, when we put the pyramid on the surface, we hide them to some extent. On the other sides, we have other relationships that are normally more open to others. The pyramid is filled with different liquids representing the individual factors and those with the most weight lie at the bottom of the pyramid and vice versa. There are more important factors in relationships than unimportant ones, and the volume of the pyramid at the bottom is significantly larger than at the top. Relationship problems are best illustrated by drilling into a pyramid. If we drill at the top, some of the less important factors will come out immediately, while the other more important factors will just slowly evaporate. This gives us time to patch up the holes or the relationship. However, when we drill below, the fluid will start to drain depending on the size of the hole or the size of the problem, with the important factors draining out first and often we do not even have time to patch in these cases. The fact is that we humans cannot live without relationships, and the beauty of every relationship lies within us. And it is the shape of our mind, our understanding, our thinking that gives us this.
Primož
Next time, 15 May 2024, GOAL(s)