Warm embraces, what compares..?
" I knew happiness when I saw it."
Warm greetings, hospitality and empathy… Towards the end of February? Exquisite meals, lengthy connecting conversations and gifts, like it was nativity season. A consecutive arrangement of amazing individuals spread over a week, what an outstanding coincidence. What if it didn’t have to be a coincidence? What if we can find warmth throughout the year, throughout the season? Is this something to consistently strive for, to live by? Open minds and hearts; an interlude to thou relationships…
The Search
There must be something to the act of yearning for the embrace of another. The relational explorer venturing out of their home base psyche and into the domain of another, an unknown other. Explorers of old would venture out for a new cure, new knowledge, a new world even. Present day explorers explore the abysmal depths of the ocean and some even seek the immortal acts of traversing the cosmos. In a way commencement of another on a deeper level may erase the concept of our own mortality. To have a chance of the Divine, the sacred. The authentic practice of asking another advanced cognitive being that they slow their autonomic processors down slightly and delay their own quarrels with the universe to attend to your words. That may be the very backbone of the counseling profession, the act of pausing one’s own discourses to attend to the internal discourses of another. Men and Women do not search for transactional relationships though, at least not intentionally. I believe they search for this connection because it is our inevitable fate, to seek connection. To seek a knowing, a true knowing of another human being, the closest we may ever get to the cosmos, the Thou relationship.
The Embrace
I’ve touched on Thou relationships before. Martin Buber, a Jewish existential philosopher went into great emphasis on this term of conversation. I enjoy using this term because I haven’t found another way to describe it. I still am a student to the old philosophers. Still a student of life. Life continues to teach me despite my indifference to its hints and CliffsNotes at times. In a week, life taught about ordinary relationships and the potential for transcendent effects.
I embraced with an engaged couple over the weekend. They are friends of my girlfriend’s and as anyone would, we accommodated them to stay over. During this time we shared meals, they taught me about investing and ways to save money, and most importantly it was not transactional. The couple went to the butcher, cooked a five-star feast, provided unreal commentary on a variety of TLC tv shows ( they should really start a comedy podcast), and expressed their interests in life and what they wanted out of it. The highlight of the trip was a tour of my town. It took roughly an hour and a half, and it felt like it lasted 8 minutes. It was captivating. The trans like state of deep conversation mixed with a background playlist on an early morning drive through the city. I seldom do that, its always usually just myself. It left me wanting more. More conversations, more thou relationships on drives, more group engagements, more connection.
After the couple parted on their 2-hour voyage home I stumbled into my secondary encounter. A coworker turned friend who recently transferred to a position across town. His life experience is boundless, and his dad jokes are infinite. He has mastered the timeless art of communicating with the least number of words possible, yet he says more than enough. We shared deep conversation about breaking loose from the matrix of work over dinner. The concept of our limited time on the planet came up, and how he intended to maximize it, own it. I once again found myself captivated. The golden hour was upon us, and it felt like a 1970s movie. The words were just more real, I don’t know how to explain it. One of these conversations where “meaning” was personified as the third occupant of our table. Everything at this table was just better. He remarked to me later this week that our conversation about finding a realtor and purchasing a home changed his life, little did he know his sincerity and preservation of “thou” changed mine too.
The separation
The third encounter this week was bittersweet. A good training partner and someone I would call a friend was moving and asked for my assistance. I had never spent time with him outside of the gym, but I respected him and enjoyed our convos weekly. Another partner from the gym joined in the expeditious task of loading his 20-foot U-Haul. The thou aspect of the encounter crept in over Italian sandwiches of all things. We shared five years of gym stories, laughs, inside jokes and that transitioned to new beginnings. Someone in the group uttered “nothing lasts forever” and we all nodded in agreeance, we all knew it was true. My friend expressed his excitement for his move out of state, the concept of his family being closer, better education for his son who needed it. The pieces of the puzzle of his life came together as we sat Indian style on his garage floor. The pieces were beautiful. He was making this move for his family, for a chance at a better life, a better fate. His narrative for the move was poetic and I was submerged into this storyline like a New York Times best seller. I was again, captivated. I knew I would be losing a friend at least in proximity but I feel closer to him now that I have ever felt in 5 years of training with him. The thou relationship we shared about separation challenged me to separate from my own distortions regarding closeness and meaningful relationships.
This week encompassed lessons about relationships that I have not examined this thoroughly in the past. I have indeed experienced many thou relationships and my fair share of searches, embraces and separations. These are natural in life. We all search, some get lucky to embrace and we all at some point separate. From what that is in which we separate from is just a matter of when. Eventually we will separate from certain relationships, careers, points of view and ultimately this earth. What we do with this time is up to us, what we search for is also up to us. We can search for the mundane and trivial encounters. The superficial. We can be satiated by these things; they can keep us churning along in the cog of life until our inevitable fate takes us somewhere else. We can also seek to create thou correspondence with whomever we engage with. The richness in the art of human contact, a timeless form often forgotten but never out of reach. In this life of surface level mingling, it is a chance to step into the domain of the immortal, the heavenly. As a man I can think of no better way to express my mortality.
What I’ve been listening to: Disco ( It really is timeless)
What Ive been doing: Recently started weight training again
What I’ve been reading: Textbooks, poetry, peoples facial expressions.