The Relational Rings Around Us

In this blog, I am going to return again to the subject of responsibilities; this time, not just to ourselves, but for ourselves and our relationships.

Few in this world are without relationships of some kind. Perhaps, if one is a hermit in a cave, he/she is relatively free of relationships of any kind. Humans are social beings; as far as anyone can tell, this is, "hardwired" into us. As a result, as I have written previously, by taking responsibility for ourselves is to go against what is expected, and is not easy to do.

I have gone further in asking you to analyze who and what you have become as an individual up to now, and to, tentatively, take responsibility for what you have become; now I go further and ask you to reflect on how you, just being alive in this world, have an affect on anyone and everyone around you. I have approached this before, discussing how our attitudes and other non-verbal signals we give off affect how others react to us.

Today, I want to start this new approach to taking responsibility for oneself by asking that you either visualize or draw a picture; the picture would be of a stick-figure human with circles/rings going out from around the figure. The rings represent the invisible forms of communication and/or interaction that we send out all the time.

We, in fact, believe that we have a right to do, have, or use whatever we want in our "space," without interference. We in this country believe, "A man's home is his castle"; the emphasis being on, "man's." As a result, we have Programmed ourselves to ignore, or not believe in, such communication and interactions--to believe that what we communicate and how we interact in such ways is not important.

So, say, this stick figure lives alone in an apartment, in one of six, in your building. (Unlike in the past, this has become a common situation for many; in the past, most lived, as many still do, in a group situation of one kind or another.) I, for example, living in my apartment in this building, only infrequently interact with my neighbors, although I have met each of them, therefor, they also know who I am. They, as a result, as I, having formed some small relationship with each other, have created a small box for them in our minds/consciousness.

For each of us, into this box, will go small details about him/her of which they will probably not be aware. For example, in addition to having been assisted in various ways by one of my neighbors, and with whom I have had a number of short, positive interactions, has been added the fact that he has one/two/varies(?)small dogs which he frequently leaves out in his small yard when he is gone, and which bark at anything and everything, sometimes for many hours at a time. This has had a negative affect on me and my life, as I am home often. He has also taken to smoking in his apartment in the evenings, (whether this--smoking--is a new habit, or not, I do not know). This habit impacts on my life in that the smoke filters through the intervening wall between us, and makes it hard for me to breath. All of these personal bits and pieces are in the small box that I have created for him in my consciousness, and some of the ways his, "rings" impact on my life.

These are common problems, when one has close neighbors, but few think about the affect that these small additions to one's life have on others. In actuality, influenced by the belief that, "A man's home is his castle," in real life, if someone does complain about such things to the other individual(s), the reaction is frequently one of anger/abuse, and, not infrequently, negative retaliation, in affect, denying responsibility for this aspect of their lives.

If you have joined with another--two stick figures with two sets of rings going out, overlapping--everything becomes exponentially more complicated. Say, you are one part of a couple who lives in a duplex, with another couple living above you; from the time you wake up in the morning to when you go to sleep, (or beyond) not only is everything going out from you, (your rings) impacting in some way not only the individual you live with, but your neighbors above you, as well. In turn, it affects how those individuals interact with you, moment-to-moment, day-to-day, creating your personal reality.

I will give, as an example, someone I knew quite some time ago; he was a personnel consultant to a Company where I worked, in a small independent office. He used our space regularly, as it was available, thus we became friends. Over the time I knew him, and his wife, he told me the tale of his life.

He and his wife lived in a duplex, with another couple living above them. He was bothered by the fact that the couple above them, (the owners) were quite unfriendly and unpleasant to them whenever they crossed paths; he could not understand why this was. Over time, this friend became interested in a particular Eastern spiritual system, and began to practice it. His wife, subsequently, became interested and joined with him in learning about these new beliefs, as well as their dietary practices, incorporating them for themselves, changing their eating habits.

Fast forward, at another, later, visit from him to our Company, he updated me on his personal life. Not only had he lost a lot of weight, causing my co-workers in the Company to think he was ill, it was obvious that his state-of-mind was much more positive. He told me that, as a result of his new personal practices/path, that he and his wife were getting along much better; it seems that they had been having a lot of loud fights previously. Not only that, his neighbors had started being very pleasant to them when they met.

This story, for me, is a clear example of how the rings we create around ourselves, indeed, create our day-to-day reality. In their case, what started this change was for one of them to become open to a different set of Beliefs, and putting them into practice for himself, with no expectation of how it could change his life and relationships.

Using these examples, rearrange your stick-figure picture to represent your current personal life. In the visualization or drawing you have created, in addition to stick figures for each member of the household, add another stick representation for each aspect of your life that can and will have an impact on yourself and others--one or more for a pet or pets, one for a loud stereo system, etc., etc. Begin labeling the rings around yourself, as well as adding, and labeling, rings around the self for such habits/aspects as smoking, drinking, snoring, etc., etc.

As I have written in a previous blog, while, "every person may believe he/she is an island, no individual is truly an island."

I leave this blog with this tool of drawing stick figures with rings, as a new way to explore how being responsible for the self includes one's responsibility toward others as a result of who you are--one's aspects--and what has been added to the life in the way of relationships, habits and possessions.

Shirley Gallup