Editor’s Note: We’ve been occasionally featuring relationship coach Blair Glaser’s posts about using leadership/business skills in relationships. Here is another of her columns. — Amanda
I was on the phone with a dear friend who was driving from store to store at 9pm on a weeknight, in search of a required “book sock” for her son’s new textbook. Being single and childless, I’m still not completely sure what a book sock is, but I get the gist.
Relationship and organizational coach Blair Glaser.
Something about the absurdity of her late night wild sock chase got under my skin, and I decided to leave a voice mail in the character of the book sock, while she was perusing the aisles of Target. My high pitched whine sounded like a sad sock puppet. (click link to listen)
“Hello? It’s the Book Sock calling. Where are you??? I miss you!! I’m waiting for you! Come find me! Love, you!”
It was absurd beyond measure, but we had a lot of fun when she called back, with her raging at me (as the book sock) about my unavailability.
We are dealing with a humanitarian crises of epic proportions, our ecology is changing drastically before our eyes, and on an economic level, although the stock market is doing very well, many small businesses and practitioners are at a loss as to how to get people to pay for their services.
You’ve probably heard this before, but when people are dying they reflect most on the people and love in their lives. Therefore, I am urging us all in these uncertain, terrifying times, to make our personal relationships a priority.
I’m not talking about putting the needs of others before your own. We’ve been there, done that, and that is not truly satisfying for anyone.
I’m not talking about putting all of our own needs first, as a way of “being empowered,” because that leads to the kind of self-absorption that makes intimacy impossible.
I’m talking about understanding the needs of relationships. They need attention, and constancy, and time to flourish.
I’m talking about reflecting on the different ways each of our close relationships augments our lives.
About the simple pleasure of knowing another person inside and out, for better and for worse.
About the pleasure of showing up for another in distress, or having someone to lean on when you are struggling to manage on your own.
About sharing food, thoughts, ideas, jokes, kisses and billowing laughter at the absurdity of it all.
In advice blogging fashion, I’m supposed to put a To Do here. But I won’t.
I’ll just invite you to sit with it.
You can find out more information about Blair Glaser and her work at her website, www.blairglaser.com
Yes, thank you for this. I’ve never felt this fact so strongly as I do now. A friend of mine is fighting for his life, after a bone marrow transplant, which was successful – but there have been complications since then, and in addition , the medication he is on has sent him slightly off his head. The support that my friend and his wife (one of my dearest friends) are being given by friends and acquaintances is unbelievable – and even a couple of friends of mine who don’t know them have been sending prayers and love,, at my request, This experience has made me realise how deeply interconnected we all are, and how we need to show up for each other in times of need, and reach out a helping hand to strangers, too.
I’m pleased to see this post, as I find a lot of relationship discussion singularly focused on how to achieve self-interest … which is entirely viable, especially to those who are only just waking up to some sense of victimization … but which is only part of the picture.
Within every long-term relationship there is inequity of energy: take a parent/child relationship, where the parent is throwing all kinds of time and resource into developing a child’s faculties … and 50 years later, the child/parent relationship finds the child doing the same as the parents faculties diminish. To resent either investment is to ignore the big picture.
Relationship needs are like a see/saw … sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down. If there is mutual respect and authentic affection and motive, one can hope for an eventual equity of experience. But to assume it will be like that on a daily basis is … in my opinion … absurd.
The whole thought of self-sacrifice sends most of us running with our hair on fire, and yet that behavior is built in to the human psyche and serves a purpose. Perhaps — in a time frame where housing is expensive and resources slim — that’s why we now have more single people living in this nation than coupled. We’re trying to figure this out, having over-compensated for how out of balance things have been for so long, and the signals we receive from our scattered and disenfranchised social network doesn’t seem to help at all.
Life is a series of valuable errors. Learning when one is giving “too much” is one of them. Perhaps learning when giving “too little” is, as well. Thanks for this piece and for addressing the kind of ‘service’ we provide one another that comes straight from the heart.
Thank you to all three of you for your insights!!! Very much what I needed to read. I feel like I can breathe for the firsts time today/this weekend.
So a book sock is actually a book cover. We used to make them out of paper bags and color them!
I guess that’s pretty “Old School!”
Such simple advice. Would that we could all heed it. I think I can do it! Thank you for your wisdom.