A relationship is like..a flower, or a plant if you will. It needs nurturing and care just like people. And relationships involves people in general. There are other types of relationships besides those that involve humans. Like for example the love that you and your new i-Phone have, or the strong intimacy that you feel around your Canon 450D dSLR, or the relationship that i have [in my dreams]…okay, would have between me and my Audi R8 V12 TDI.
Just like any relationship, even the ‘seemingly-senile’ ones I mentioned; must never be neglected. Something like if you forgot you left your i-Phone in the living room only to go back to find it in pieces cause your baby-cousin thought it was a Nintendo DS. And babies don’t play NDS! But I’m here to talk about the relationships that you can’t buy with money, and more importantly can’t buy-back with money.
In our day to day life its’ easy to forget what is most important to us. What we hold dear and close to our hearts. In our pursuit of self-preservation, self-assurance and even greed, we tend to slowly ‘get lazy’ to remember every little details like dates of anniversaries or birthdays, his favorite food, what music she likes to listen to. We feel some how, can’t be bothered with it and slowly, little by little those relationships that we have planted so long ago starts to dwindle and deteriorate.
As slowly as it fades, as we go on with our life selfish as we are; sometimes the relationships’ would ‘give-out’ signals. To warn us that the relationship is in need of dire attention and something is ‘out of place’. To no avail I’m afraid, because I doubt we were listening or even paying any attention to any signals we might have encountered. We may give reasons or try to justify our actions or more appropriately, inaction. And no matter how logical you may think your excuses are, relationships tend to go forward through time. Not backwards and definitely it won’t stop and there is no pause,’Time and Tide waits for no Man’.
Funny thing about pausing ‘time’, we humans are very, very good ‘at it’. Allow me to enlighten you, ‘Pausing ‘a relationship is more than just giving stupid justifications, its’ more like procrastinating. An example would be like, “We could do the anniversary ‘next’ Friday honey, its’ also a public holiday right..?”. Ever heard ‘Live for the Moment’? Well, we do live for or in the moment, only some of us do it for the wrong reasons and it usually doesn’t involve anyone in our relationships’ that we cared so much for since 6 or 7 years ago. We are so good at this that we set it as a routine into our minds everytime we go through it in the future.
Another factor why we forget is, the inability to balance out our life between our work/entertainment or [whatever keeps you ‘alive’] and our relationships. At first you’d call your mother every day from England just to tell her you’re fine and all is good in your campus, while she cries and sobs in Kuala Lumpur nearly everytime you call. Gradually the calls would lessen up to once a week, then its’ your mother’s turn to call you because she hardly heard from you in nearly a month. And at that point you get too defensive whenever she asks about your new boyfriend or about your grades dropping.
And at one point in your life, which will come to you eventually; you ‘run out’ of excuses. You don’t even bother postponing or stalling all the important occasions that the people around you find very crucial for you to be a part of in their lives. Yes, struck a chord there myself. The relationships that we share , with other people? Yes, they are ‘people‘ too, and they have their own lives to live. Their own dreams and aspirations and their own wants and needs.
But they never begged you to stay home for the night when you said you had to meet up with some clients from overseas, even if that night was your wedding anniversary with her. She never forgot how much you loved to play with your plastic toy-soldiers, never complained endlessly about the 9 months of agony she went through only to deliver your sorry-useless ass into this world. She never gave you excuses when you wanted her to meet your family on holidays; unlike the ‘pitiful excuses’ that you gave her for not being able to visit her mother in the hospital after a near fatal accident; even when it was a holiday.
So how is it then, that they still remember your birthday, that they remember your favorite movies and music, and that they even remembered where you put that favorite teddy bear-the one you had since you were 5 years old? Ever thought of that? Have you even considered the fact that relationships are more than just a flower as the metaphor goes…its’ more like a garden of flowers. These people surely didn’t forget anything, at least not like you…
When you use terms like obligation instead of love and care. Or even terms like business deal of the century instead of wedding anniversary. These people in our relationships never had trouble on how to balance out whats more consequential in their lives because they never ever confused the terms simply because, they never even considered putting a label to it.
So why did we, why must we…how could we…They did everything for us, yet we did nothing…they deserved better than all the bullshit we put them through, they deserved better than all the headaches and heartaches, the tears and sorrow, all the emptiness and misery that we created. I hope you’d know where I’m getting at here and what you should do.
Because honestly…If you are the ones’ that didn’t even care in the first place, I’m very sure you don’t even deserve them in the first place…
I would know, trust me . . .
Sumi-masen . . .Hanaii.
Xander'z 