Zones of all Relationships

All relationships have 3 areas for each of the parties:
Comfortable, Uncomfortable and Fully Conflicted.

The thoughts, actions, ways of doing, views, risks, uncertainties, priorities are in either of these 3 zones.

For example:

My family member may be comfortable for me to go to meet a friend, uncomfortable for me to go for gocarting (considering the risk element) and maybe fully conflicted for me to go a solo trip to Europe (risk element.

For each thought, action, view, risk, uncertainty, priorities each party can slot it differently. Unless the slotting is clear and accepted and minimized, the conflict can grow.

What messes up this further is the view of the third person about the thoughts, actions, views, risks, uncertainties, priorities of the relationship between the 2 people involved.

E.g.: a spouse may feel that they are being less prioritised when their spouse goes out with friends every weekend. This event may further move from uncomfortable to Fully conflicted as the time goes by.

Relationships are extremely difficult to maintain in comfortable zones with so many views, thoughts, actions, priorities not just of the direct relationships with the people involved, but because it also has to align the 'outside these 2 people involved'.

I think it is a good practice to map the various actions, views, risks and priorities of the close people involved that would be in the 3 zones and discuss with them openly about the agreement to disagree upfront as the conflict may go through frustration and then end up in a 'give up' situation and maybe trying to understand that the other person is different and that they cannot mould them into 'their' ways.

Can one person change the world?

It is difficult to fathom that in today's world of democratisation of internet and communication where anything secret or plan or thoughts can be dissipated to millions in minutes, with so much interconnectedness with all things and anything can come back and bite you immediately, that one person can overcome all these and get do something unexpected again and again.

With so much interconnectedness and checks and balances and democracies, it should have been almost impossible for someone to change the world's dynamics so fast.
Yet, Donald Trump did it.

Many of the countries of Europe after millenia of fighting against each other and USA came to the mature conclusion of not fighting with each other and rather saving the millions of national resources to better uses like education, lifestyle enhancement, technology and progressed substantially after world war 2 until 2023.

Now, all of a sudden, 1 man is creating havoc almost on a daily basis and causing distrust among things that were built layer on layer for so many decades of trust and effort.

Surely, many would be in disillusionment as was all these years of trust and work just a fake and was it worth it?

The same kind of disillusionment that happens when trust is broken with someone for selfish reasons.

How would humanity look upon this 100 years later? Does this instance change of course of history forever where no country would trust another or just a blip in the overall maturity of having more non-fighting friendly relationships?

New age service professions

In Japan, there are many "Rent a boyfriend" services for quite a long time.

Just before covid, "Professional Cuddling" started as a profession. Now, there are many Professional cuddlers around the world.

In today's world, there is coaching for everything. Including many things we don't even know exist. For any sports, there are coaches, for relationship issues, there are relationship coaches.

But what came to a surprise to me is that there are even "polyamory coaches". I am sure some of you would even look up that word.

I wonder how are these people are trained, how much is their knowledge common or varied. 

Is there any course to become any of these?

Conflicts in love

 I recently watched an avant garde movie called "Love Lies and Bleeding".

The movie took a few things to the extremes with the plot and with clear decisions to be made.

On introspecting the movie, there were different kinds of love: Sibling love (to protect the other), Husband-wife love (the wife loved him despite he being a physical abuser), father-daughter love/ dislove (where one daughter separated from the father due to his alleged killing of her mother) and lesbian love (2 ladies loving one lady).

The clashes and conflicts that came:
One sister wants to protect her sister from abuse and is ok with killing her husband while the abused sister wants to continue her troubled relationship with her husband. Priority and purpose of love.

One lady loving another while a stranger loves the same girl. Competition in love.

A father wants to protect her daughter from cops while she says mum about the killing of the mother and others by her dad. Love to not hurt.

The conflicts came when one love or the purpose of one love came in confrontation or a higher priority of another love.

In modern worlds, these conflicting loves are there but not shown explicitly.

One of the most common substitutes of love is giving time. When one relationship gets more time (or assumedly more time than required) than another, this comes as a conflict in love. These relationships could be grandparent-parent v/s parent-child v/s parent-in laws v/s spouse-spouse v/s friends time v/s relaxation or hobby time.

It is almost impossible not to have conflicts with the limited resources of time.

How we keep what relationships we want for the future, manage/reduce the non-value added relationships to get what we want out of life is the question.

Relationship between Time and Money

The relationship between these 2 things is interesting:
The middle class and poor, value money more than time and give their time to earn money.

The business class and the rich, value time more than money and spend money to save time.

For this class, money is time. 

Money is a tool with multiple purposes - to buy something for someone and make someone happy, to attend the best schools and gain the best knowledge to use, to travel around the world for business meetings, conferences and build and keep connections and build the networks. To get the best of the services to solve the problems than spend time to figure it out.

The middle class and the poor, don't know many ways to make money apart from trading their time to earn money with the particular set of skills they have.

For this class, time is money.

As potential to earn is limited, money is scarce and cannot be thought to spend on things, services that could have been outsourced.

For the business class and the rich, know that there are multiple ways to make money, but time is limited. They have seen their money and wealth go up and down many times and understand it much deeper. They sometimes have connections (trust from customers, suppliers, associations, bank credit, mortgaging assets) they can leverage to get back from a bad position.

Giants do their own thing

The giants of the world - USA, China, Russia do what they please. It seems that they are all in a cartel. Whenever they want to attack, block, intimidate, loot, capture, bomb, takeover, harass, overthrow dictorial/ democratically elected governments/leaders, assassinate or buyout, etc. any territory, resources, country or person, government, group or leader etc., they do so without giving a damn of what the others will say/do. How else, can these giants take unilateral action against so many sovereign nations?
USA did it to Iraq, Afganistan, Many south American countries, etc. (the list is long)
China does/did it to Tibet, Taiwan, Spartly islands
Russia is doing it to Crimea region of Ukraine.
There is one big exception though - India.
Its useless politicians/ political parties/ bureaucrats are not able to defend the countries' face against the smallest of neighbours like Maldives and Sri Lanka despite years of relationship. They are not able to provide modernisation of weapons to its army and navy assets and with the likely non-sense that has happened so far, it is very difficult to see India being able to do anything unilaterally even if it wants to.

An interesting way to learn/test history is to do the following match the following puzzle:

Country| Did this                 | To                            | Motivation              | Reason claimed
USA      | Attacked                | Tibet                        | Annexe Territory       | Remove Dictator
China     | Harrase(d)             | Georgia                   | Kill competition         | Give democracy
Russia    | Bombed                | Iran                         | Oil resources              | Remove WMD
India      | Looted                   | Libya                       | Strategic trade route   | Give Independence
NATO   | Overthrew             | Nicaragua                | Other resources          | Destroy Terrorism
UK        | Captured                | Philippines               | Take Revenge
France   | Intimidated           | Bangladesh              | Nullify future threat
              | Occupied               | Dominican Republic  | Show military might
              | Gave Indepedence | Haiti                          | Force trade
              | Forced Exile          | Mali
              | Assassination      | Panama
              | Fought                   | Mexico
              | Intervened militarily| Honduras

The last mile - A retake

It was sometime last year. And I still can't forget the look on her face. It was around 11am or so in the morning on a slightly hot day in Bangalore. As she came out of the room, she looked lovely in the saree and the various accessories. She was a bit hesitant, scared and anxious; a volatile cocktail of thoughts running in her mind. Though she was walking on her own, there were enough people behind her and kind of looked like she was pressured to walk ahead. She wasn't looking around, she had a heightened sense of things and at the same time a blur of many things. With her heart beating heavily, she tried to keep her composure and walk slowly. She ignored the sounds all around as all of it didn't matter to her any more. I tried making an eye contact with her and looked at her face, but she just saw through me and beyond me. Then she walked past me not acknowledging my presence there. But the face said it all. She was in another world at that moment, clouded with many thoughts and questions. She had 'the look'. She knew 'this was it'. There was no going back now. Maybe life flashed by her during that very moment. And the sounds around increased. She was wearing a maroon saree and sat down and soon afterward, the thali was tied and she was married.

Dedicated to my cousin on her first wedding anniversary on 8th June  :)

Strange relationship

There are many situations one comes across in life where you have a strange relationship with the other person. One category of them consists of meeting people with whom potential relationships are possible but is not yet converted into a formal relationship.For e.g., interacting with a potential tenant, a potential in-law, etc. Sometimes, the relationship cannot even be defined as a 'potential relationship' category.

What about a tenant, showing the house to a potential new buyer of the place who is going to kick out the guy showing the house. What relationship could this possibly be called? It is just a strange relationship...

Fractional living

The concept of sharing in going beyond siblings and family members...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1266644/How-live-like-millionaire--spending-fortune.html

Use of a partner ;)

Don't you need a nice comfy cushion for watching the tv now?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1261939/I-know-I-lost-comfy-cushion-bet-I--Meerkats-use-mate-backrest.html

Motherhood

"A baby gives birth to a mother".

The zones

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgT9I2nFdYv4schHrPRa4nTfd-M0_6cd2ZDjWwQaopQ4dWdklei1S4ibeZ_qAQufQeLQKP-kCdFOAzVsFUhM5cytUdyuNt6w8mA4QMlb4qHV9A_xvKokWPrgB4AbLSd3yHwJ1LRKI2EMmQE/s1600-h/null.jpg

The highs and lows

Today, a relationship came a full circle. I am now able to see how even relationships can be highly overvalued (eg.: the initial crush) to fair valued (normal pleasant relationship) to undervalued (angry and upset due to an argument) to all the way down next to zero (totally given up on the other person to even communicate with you). The last phrase was next to zero and not zero as there is always some chance and hope that the person will communicate with you at some point in time. This is similar to the stock price of the company never going to exactly zero, but it can go very close to it.

Today, a friend from the last category communicated back. In financial terms, the option value paid off significantly and I am in the money now :)

I don't know if the friendship will ever be as rosy as the days were and if I ever want it to be the same again. I guess I am not going to think a lot about it and just take the improvements as they come, one step at a time.

When you lose something very valuable and get it back out of nowhere, it usually is very exciting. But I don't think it is in case of relationships where you have been hurt very much.

The sunk feeling

Sometimes, the heart just sinks hearing or knowing something. Something you didn't expect and about something that is close to you and usually it is a big opportunity loss. There is no question of getting angry or taking revenge, since it is a one way loss where only you are the only one hurt and you anyway don't want to cause harm to the other party in any way. Sometimes, there is disappointment and sometimes, not even that, just a sense of loss. One can't really do anything about it. Just accept it and be ready for such things in the future so that it doesn't hurt you as much as it did the previous time.

A new twist

This new year has brought about some new twists. I don't know whether it is for the better or worse, but surely it has complicated things. Valuing stocks that change direction of earnings are difficult. The change in direction, makes relying on past data quite insignificant and difficult to predict the future earnings. Whether this inflection point is a blip in the long term trend or a part of a cyclical process or a permanent change in direction is very difficult to tell. Only time will tell what it actually was.

How to handle a woman?

"He had just married an old friend of mine, Paulette Goddard, all woman, magnificently distributed, as feminine as she is female. One night when we were having dinner, I said to Erich (not seriously): 'How do you get along with this wild woman?' He replied: 'Beautifully. There is never an argument.' 'Never an argument?' I asked incredulously. 'Never,' he replied. 'We will have an appointment one evening, and she charges into the room crying, 'Why aren't you ready? You always keep me waiting. Why do you ...?!' I look at her with astonishment and say, 'Paulette! Who did your hair? It's absolutely ravishing.' She says, 'Really? Do you really like it?' 'Like it?' I reply. 'You're a vision. Let me see the back.' By the time she has made a pirouette her fury is forgotten. Another time she turns on me in rage about something, and before a sentence is out of her mouth I stare at her and say breathlessly, 'My God! You're incredible. You get younger every day.' She says, 'Really, darling?' 'Tonight,' I say, 'you look eighteen years old.' And that is the end of her rage.' I was as amused as I was admiring and I said to him: 'Erich, one day I will have to write a song about that.' The song was 'How to Handle a Woman' which ends:

The way to handle a woman is to love her,
Simply love her; merely love her,
Love her, love her."

Alan Jay Lerner,  The Street Where I Live, Da Capo Press, 1978, pp. 193-4.

An object of ......

Seen on a gtalk status message about a quote from a friend's sister: "I am not an object of amusement"...

And my friend's response: "Poor thing, little does she know"

When friends walk away

http://justamotheroftwo.blogspot.com/2006/11/when-friends-walk-away_11.html

Just married

One of the best just married descriptions I have seen: "Two of us trying to dance a duet and two solos at the same time"

Everybody hurts

Everybody hurts - R.E.M
A soul stirring song when you are down...
The video is more awesome than just the great lyrics.
Watch the video at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pudOFG5X6uA

When the day is long and the night, the night is yours alone,

When you're sure you've had enough of this life, well hang on

Don't let yourself go, 'cause everybody cries and everybody hurts sometimes

Sometimes everything is wrong. Now it's time to sing along

When your day is night alone, (hold on, hold on)

If you feel like letting go, (hold on)

When you think you've had too much of this life, well hang on

'Cause everybody hurts. Take comfort in your friends

Everybody hurts. Don't throw your hand. Oh, no. Don't throw your hand

If you feel like you're alone, no, no, no, you are not alone

If you're on your own in this life, the days and nights are long,

When you think you've had too much of this life to hang on

Well, everybody hurts sometimes,

Everybody cries. And everybody hurts sometimes

And everybody hurts sometimes. So, hold on, hold on

Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on

Everybody hurts. You are not alone...