Navigating healthy relationships can be so difficult.
Developing good relationships—whether friendships or romantic ones—and deepening them in a fragile world can be challenging. We can be tempted to leave a relationship or dissolve a friendship when things become difficult or when we’re hurt by the other person. It can be challenging to work on deepening these relationships when others have said hurtful or difficult things—but that doesn’t mean we should throw in the towel.
Today, Fr. Mark-Mary challenges us to go beyond surface-level friendships and work on deepening our relationships—even though they can be fragile and hard to maintain.
Physically—we don’t exercise regularly because we’re too busy. We don’t eat the right types of food, because they take too long to prepare, it’s too easy to go through the drive- through, and we’re too busy.
We don’t sleep regularly, because there are still only twenty-four hours in a day. We feel as though our lives have a momentum of their own, that they would go on with or without us. Our list of the things we have to do just gets longer and longer. We never feel that we get caught up; we just get more and more behind every day. Seriously, when was the last time you sat down, took a deep breath, and said to yourself, “I’m caught up now!” So we rush around late at night doing fifty- five little things before we go to bed and robbing ourselves of the precious sleep that rebuilds and rejuvenates us. Why? We are too busy.
Emotionally—most of us know that the happiest people on the planet are those who are focused in their personal relationships. Relationships thrive under one condition: carefree timelessness. Do we gift our relationships with carefree timelessness? Of course we don’t. We shove them into ten minutes here and fifteen minutes there. We give them the worst time, when we are most tired and least emotionally available. Why? We are too busy.
Intellectually—we don’t even take those ten or fifteen minutes each day to read good books that challenge us to change, to grow, and to become the- best- version- of-ourselves. Why? We don’t have time. We are too busy.
Spiritually—most people very rarely step into the classroom of silence to reconnect with themselves and their God. Why? We are afraid of what we might discover about ourselves and about our lives. We are afraid we might be challenged to change. And we are too busy.
It begs the question, doesn’t it? What are we all too busy doing? For the most part, we are too busy doing just about everything, that means just about nothing, to just about nobody, just about anywhere . . . and will mean even less to anyone a hundred years from now!
Matthew Kelly
From The Rhythm of Life Click Here To Get Your Copy!
Who are your friends? Are they helping you become the-best-version-of-yourself? God wants to teach us how to be a good friend and how to have great relationships.
Question #2 is about how the people in your life are impacting your health and happiness. The people we surround ourselves with can have powerful positive effects on our life, they can also have diabolical negative effects. From time to time it’s critically important that we take an inventory of the impact people in our lives are having on us.
Question #2: Make a list of people you interact with frequently. How is each helping you become the-best-version-of-yourself (or not)… and vice-versa?
Are they raising you up or tearing you down? Do they bring light or darkness to your soul?
And what impact are you having on their lives. Are you raising them up or tearing them down? Do you bring light or darkness to their soul?”
