Whether you are aware of it or not, it is your human relations that have the biggest impact on your life. Being a grown-up often means finding your way through social relationships. The network of social relations is complicated, often manifold. Finding your way through it is a real challenge. The individual approach to overcome this varies at each of us. And this always has a huge influence on the quality of our lives, on how much happiness we are able to generate.
Starting from early childhood we seek safety and confirmation. The intensity of love and hate a child experiences is equal in both directions. A child is fair in his emotions, relations. We learn to attenuate it though as we grow. Since we are born, we are placed into a network of human relations. We have to start facing them slowly but surely.
The need for safety and confirmation
Then the awkward age strikes us with unexpected intensity of new emotions. Love is transformed, getting other connotations. But the need for safety and confirmation remains. Some fall to fidelity, some change their partners incessantly. And also friendships are getting new dimensions. Friendships are starting to deepen. Or start to fail us more often. Trust and disillusionment are filled with increased intensity.
After getting more friends and deepening a few relations, we might really find a true friend. Or even a tight circle of close friends. And at the same time, some of us get excluded from these types of communities. Whether the fault is ours, or we were just unfairly banned. And those experiences are making people seek for new friends with more intensity, other will resignedly give up and live a solitary life, or just want to be left alone.
What are these relations teaching us? What conclusions can we drag if we are looking at them from a self developmental angle? How the nature of human relations can effectively help us in our quest?
The law of reflection
This is how you could call the effect of human relations on your life. The relations we nourish towards other people are making us more visible for ourselves too. Our relations act as a mirror for us. They help us is many ways, primarily to shape our lives.
The law of reflection is decisive in
- building our self-image
- creating our understanding of the world we live in
The evolution in time of our human relations are determining our self-esteem. Thus, they decide if our strive for personal freedom and autonomous life is leading us to closeness and belonging together or to isolation and loneliness.
Seeking balance
We always face situations that bring in the potential for friendliness or isolation, acceptance or rejection. It is the nature of strong friendships to be closed for newcomers. Also, once created, they carry the possibility of disillusionment. What can then be the best attitude?
Is it good to always seek the friendship of others, fearing not to be left out or rejected? Or being involved in as many ways as possible, with the chance of melting and dissolving ourselves for the sake of safety and certainty?
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