It's All Relative

I think every good epiphany should come with a glass of red wine and a cigarette.

Right after I completed, of all things, a financial practice problem on behalf of my friend in graduate school, I took a look at the problem, the notes I had scribbled in the margin of the page, the formulas, and the answer, and realizing it had been over 3 years since the last time I had attempted a problem like that, saw that it took me 15 good minutes of spending some time with the numbers, a calculator, and a text book to work it out. This came after a good 45 minutes of frantically going through the problem using formulas I did not comprehend because they were out of the context of anything that was currently relevant to me and getting no where. And even though the diploma hanging on my wall claims that I graduated from an accredited public business school with Finance as my major course of study, the formulas and thought processes I needed to do complete this problem I could not surmise from the top of my head. I had to sit down and spend a little quality time with the text. But because many years ago I once comprehended these types of things with more immediacy, it didn't take me long to get back into the swing. The foundation was there, but the application had been lost. And so, as I sat on my balcony afterward, pondering, I thought, this is as is anything in life.

Now I don't want to simplify this away to a quip like, "If you don't use it, you lose it", even though it is seemingly a truth, but I'd like to take it a little deeper than that.

The connection that came was, everything in this life really is relational.

Everything that grows and thrives and blossoms into something greater than it was, is something that we dove in and spent a little quality time with.

How do people fall in love? How does a garden grow? How does a person build a website or become a great actor? How do people become great friends, or great musicians? It happens when you start, develop, and build a relationship with whatever it is that you want to see progress.

Tiger Woods is the greatest golfer in the world. How did it happen? Is he a physical or mental phenomenon? In some ways, maybe. But he had a talent, it was identified, and he has such an intricate knowledge and relationship with the game of golf, that he has far surpassed anyone else playing today because he continually develops it.

It seems bizarre to think of the connection between a person and an inanimate thing or even an idea to be relational, because we tend to think of that in purely man-to-man terms, but really, the concept applies just the same. A great actor has to develop a relationship with the art of acting, the fundamentals, the nuance. Then it must go a step further to be applied directly to a story, and more specifically to the role in that story. Everything in the process though, is really the person developing and nurturing a relationship with those aspects of the job, so that one might grow upon the other.

I like this idea that all things are relative, because it seems to support how connected we are to each other and all things.