If we examine our personal histories, we will find a story of relationships. In a real sense, we are the sum of our relationships. The human person was created, designed, to be in relationship with others. We cannot be truly ourselves by ourselves. I read somewhere that a thing that does not exist in relation to anything else cannot itself be said to exist. To really grow as a human being, we need other people. We only become who we are through the relationships that shape our lives. There is Martin Buber’s famous conclusion that “all real living is meeting.”
Lately I’ve been trying to think of all those whom I’ve met in my life in one way or another; those who went with me along the path of life. Not too many came in a way that I planned or contrived. Most relationships sort of found me. There’s a mystery to it. People come into our lives and go out of our lives, sometimes only for a few minutes. For example, I remember, from many years ago, an early Saturday morning on the DeKalb Avenue subway station. I was standing on the platform. She was wearing a black coat. She had jeans on and was drinking coffee. One strand of her hair blew across her cheek, touching the corners of her mouth. There was some eye contact, glances. We got on the same car. We both got off at Grand Central, and then I lost her. In retrospect I wish I had approached her.
There are all the people to whom I must by now be the merest memory.
When I think back over my own life, I recall the relationships that were formal and distant. My main emotion with some people was unease. There were relationships in which we took an immediate dislike to each other. Saint Seraphim of Sarov addressed each person who came to him as “my joy.” My response to too many people was, “You again?” There were the relationships that did not stand the test of time.
Writers and philosophers of our time speak of existential isolation. They take the view that no relationship can surmount loneliness; no one has access to the real depths of another.
Albert Schweitzer said we are each a secret to the other. Freud stated that every encounter, beautiful as it may seem, only dulls the incurable wound of loneliness. Flannery O’Connor wrote “I love a lot of people, understand none of them.” (Spiritual Writings, p.161). And W.H. Auden wrote:
“I’m beginning to lose patience
With my personal relations:
They are not deep,
And they are not cheap.” (Shorts)
I don’t think life is exclusively like this. A number of people became very dear to me. As Carson McCullers stated, they became “the we of me” (The Member of the Wedding, p. 137). I can’t imagine the world without them. They’ve got to be there just as naturally as trees or birds or clouds. Without them I would be incomplete; I would no longer be me. A dear friend like this moving out of your life is almost as much of a loss as a death.
I think all people’s lives involve such we-relationships. They are among the best things God handed us.
I can’t help thinking that I didn’t have a real biography until my wife entered my life. After a while, I often tire of being with other people. I could be with her for hours and hours and not be tired for an instant of her.
I die as often from thee I go,
Though it be but an hour ago. (John Donne, The Legacy)
Many happily married people feel this way.
The elderly often develop relationships in which the two of them complement each other wonderfully. There are the long years of affectionate understanding between them. Hurts and annoyances that might otherwise end a relationship no longer have the last word. They’ve grown very close, close to death and close to each other. They sort of fuse together in these last years.
All of us, as we age, tend to be able to discern more and more when to act, how to act, what to say, and often more importantly, what not to say. We learn not to strike the wrong note.
John of the Cross tells us we are like a stone that must be chiseled and fashioned before being set in the building. Our relationships are instruments which God uses to chisel us. They are part of God’s plan. By means of these chiseling interactions we become more the self God wants us to be. We should think of some of our relationships as artisans, present there in order to improve us.
Overall, I believe there are people God has given us. I wonder if there are any accidental meetings, or is grace and providence at work in all of them? Some people do come to us at crucial times. There are certain people who come to us like a gift from heaven. Most of our hurts come through relationships, so does our healing.
We develop an ever-deepening gratitude and wonder for all those who have loved us.
I have two particularly poignant memories. One is how I felt my throat tighten when I watched an elderly woman reach for her husband’s hand as they strolled down the sidewalk. The other is a memory of how my wife would make room for me beside her on a couch and spread a quilt across our laps and rest her head on my shoulder.
