Relationships are one of the greatest paradoxes: we can't live without them, yet all relationships come to an end one way or another.
This is the final installment of a four part series we started six months ago titled: The Four Insatiable Urges of Humanity. The first three parts can be found here: the urge for justice, the quest for spirituality, and then the appreciation of beauty and culture. This edition will explore the longing for relationships.
Much like the last installment on spirituality this one took a bit longer to put together because personally I found myself watching some significant issues of relationship unravel.
When Sydney Crosby scored THE gold medal game winning goal (from a Jarome Iginla pass no less) the entire country went beserk.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9tdRnL7Rlc]
What does this have to do with relationships? 80% of the country was jumping up and down together; perhaps one of the top 10 defining moments in Canadian culture. However, it was what happened before the game that was interesting.
Hours before the game people started lining up and congregating. Regular bars had line ups outside at 10 in the morning, hours before the game. Everybody tried to be with somebody to watch the game with a friend.
We needed to be with each other.
The day following the event, and up until today, the topic comes up in conversation and we all share where we were at ‘the time’ and who we were with.
We participated so we could belong.
Pursuing relationships and gatherings is not something we think too hard about–that is until we can’t capture “it”.
Humanity longs to be connected, we are social beings and as such we crave that contact. It may be a big group, it may be one on one, but we need some form of connection.
But we also crave more than mere ‘connection’–we crave love. You know what it is. That ‘thing’ that’s more than a pat on the back or a high five. Love is something that you share intimately, the very core of your humanity, with another, in the hopes that it remains forever.
So what happens when connection becomes elusive? When we can’t find relationships that last? When we keep reaching out and giving ourselves up but don’t receive commitment in return?
There’s something to be craved with permanency in relationships. Everyone wants a friend who will be with them through thick and thin. But we want more than just a friend. So some pursue marriage, perhaps the greatest attempt of lasting relationship, seeking another level of intimacy and commitment that will (hopefully) last the remainder of a life.
But sometimes these quests get derailed.
This has been most notably evident in my life as I’ve watched two married couples end their relationship. One couple chose to split (perhaps one decided enough was enough), the other marriage ended because of a cancer related death. Both couples were around the same age, married about the same length, and ended almost at the same time; both had their own sad and soul wrenching moments of brokenness.
So why do we bother to pursue something that can cut to the very core of our being?
I think it’s because we believe we need it, and we also believe the good is worth the attempt and also outweighs the potential of any bad.
Sometimes we get into a groove where we approach and enter relationships, especially the ones that are the most serious, with high expectations but crappy return. So we then figure it must be something wrong with us so we’ll try again. We’ll give a bit more of our soul, our body, our time, our life. But we miss the mark yet again. Over and over we go in hopes that we’ll find love that sticks.
All this to say we have the power chose and relationships, or we are left powerless when relationships are taken away.
But does it have to be this way…..?