Let's Not Forget Fun and Recreation

We're not sure whether all work and no play made Jack a dull boy, or whether Jack was a dull boy to begin with, so, dullard that he was, he worked too much. Either way, fun and recreation are a necessary part of an undull life.

When we say recreation, we mean it in the lighter sense of recreation (tennis, boating, going to the movies), as well as in the deeper sense — re-creation. What do you do to recreate yourself? This might include meditation, retreats (re-treats), prayer, spiritual work, rest, pilgrimages, massage, silent time — whatever activities recharge your batteries in a deep and powerful way.

We didn't include Fun/Recreation in the other areas of life because we assume this is an area people will want to enjoy no matter what other area of life they choose. To use the battery analogy, Fun/Recreation charges the batteries; Marriage/Family, Career/Professional, Social/Political, and Religious/Spiritual are the ways in which the batteries are used.

It's important to realize, however, that the endless pursuit of fun and recreation in and of themselves is not very fulfilling. In fact, it's something of a curse. When one pursues pleasure all the time, the pursuit of pleasure becomes work — it's a job. If pleasure is one's job, then where does one go to recharge the batteries for more work? The pleasure is the work. Hence, perhaps, the old saying about not mixing business with pleasure.

Fun and recreation form a stable base for fulfilling one's dreams — they're just not a very good dream all by themselves.

Relationships

Please don't think from the tone of the last few chapters that the only way to pursue a dream other than marriage and family is to become a hermit. Far from it.

Relationships are essential to the pursuit of almost any goal. In successfully achieving a goal, however, it is important to understand the different types of relationships that are available. When you do, you can see which types of relationships can best help you pursue your dream.

Before exploring the types of relationships humans tend to have, here are two essential points about relationships generally. First, all relationships are with yourself — and sometimes they involve other people. Second, the most important relationship in your life — the one you'll have, like it or not, until the day you die — is with yourself.

That said, let's look at the various types of human relationships.

Recreational Relationships: These are the people we enjoy being with simply because we enjoy being with them. What we do together is not as important as that we are together.

These are the people we generally call "friends." We love them in a nonpossessive sense. "Love without attachment is light," wrote Norman 0. Brown. We see people in recreational relationships for what they are. "We don't love qualities," Jacques Maritain explained, "we love a person; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as their qualities."

Again, the word "recreational" should not be misread as "always superficial." These can be some of the most re-creative and nurturing relationships, in our lives.

Among the many things that can (although usually doesn't) take place in a recreational relationship is sex. This is fine, as long as neither person looks upon the other as "the one and only."

Romantic Relationships: Here, sex — or sexual desire — combines with a feeling of, "you are the only one for me," and "if you don't love me, I'm miserable and worthless." We don't have to like — or even know — the "love object." Some say ignorance is a prerequisite for romantic love. "Of course it is possible to love a human being," wrote Charles Bukowski, "if you don't know them too well."

Romantic love is the most popularized of all relationships. Just about every movie, TV show, novel and popular song features romantic interaction. It's called the "love interest." It seemingly must be worked into every plot, no matter how silly or tortured.

Why? Because romantic love is a primary cultural myth of our time. As George Lucas explained to Steven Spielberg (these are the two who somehow squeezed a "love interest" into all of those Indiana Jones movies), "If the boy and girl walk off in the sunset hand-in-hand in the last scene, it adds ten million to the box office."

We call romantic love ("If only you could find the right person to love, you would live happily ever after") a myth because no other human endeavor has failed so miserably, so often — yet continues to have such "good press."

Not everyone, of course, believes "the press." "I can understand companionship," said Gore Vidal, "I can understand purchased sex in the afternoon. I cannot understand the love affair." Margaret Anderson explained it this way, "In real love you want the other person's good. In romantic love you want the other person."

Some people "fall in love" rather than deal with the guilt often associated with sex. "If we love each other, sex is OK," the logic goes. "Love is the drug," wrote Germaine Greer, "which makes sexuality palatable in popular mythology."

Romantic love is a primary distraction to the pursuit of any goal, including Marriage/Family. We should say especially Marriage/Family. The illusion of "falling in love" can blind one to the suitability of a partner for a venture as delicate, intricate, and important as getting married and raising children. (Or even getting married and raising orchids.)

"Many a man has fallen in love with a girl," Maurice Chevalier observed, "in light so dim he would not have chosen a suit by it." And, many a person has chosen a mate in a light of reason dimmer than that.

In addition, the lack of romantic love is hardly sufficient reason to eliminate another otherwise-qualified candidate from a list of potential spouses — and yet it's done all the time. People say, "They'd be a wonderful husband/wife, but I don't really love them." You might as well use romantic love as a criteria for going into business, or any other significant partnership.

It is this blindness, as much as anything else, that accounts for the many failures in the pursuit of a successful marriage. If you think running a house and raising children isn't a business, you've never run a house and raised children.

"Love is an ideal thing;" said Goethe, "marriage is a real thing. A confusion of the real with the ideal never goes unpunished."

Contractual Relationships: In a contractual relationship, something is exchanged for something else. The "something" could be anything — a product, a service, an experience. Usually the culturally agreed upon symbol for energy — money — is involved in the transaction.

When we pay someone for something, or to do something for us, that is a contractual relationship. When somebody pays us for something, or to do something for them, that, too, is a contractual relationship. It could be as basic as buying a box of cough drops at the store (even such a simple transaction involves entering into a contract), or as elaborate as a fifty-year partnership — including marriage.

In a contractual relationship, we are "in relationship" primarily because of the exchange. We can enjoy each other's company or not. If so, that's an extra plus, If not, too bad — we're in it for something else.

"Almost all of our relationships begin," explained W. H. Auden, "and most of them continue as forms of mutual exploitation, a mental or physical barter, to be terminated when one or both parties run out of goods."

Common-Goal Relationships: Here people share a common goal, and that goal is the primary reason they relate. This is often the source of work-based relationships. The common goal may be a company goal, a personal goal fulfilled by the company, or, simply, as Sir Noel Coward put it, "your pay packet at the end of the week."

It might be a service goal — relating to fellow Red Cross volunteers, for example. It might be a religious or spiritual goal — the people you know in church, or who pursue the same spiritual dreams as you.

The marriages that continue "for the sake of the children" are also examples of common-goal relationships — the raising of the children being the common goal. "The value of marriage," said Peter De Vries, "is not that adults produce children, but that children produce adults."

Power-Point Relationships: This is a specific form of common-goal relationships. Here one person (or team of people) becomes the "power point." A group feeds its energy (power) to the power-point person, and through this power point, the entire group can fulfill its common goal.

An example is the Olympic athlete training for an event. Power from many people is given to this one person. The "power" may be in the form of information, encouragement, money, time — anything the athlete needs to meet the goal. A trainer, coach, corporate sponsor, masseur, doctor, nutritionist — and many others — channel their power (in the form of individual specialties) to the athlete. They all have the same goal — winning the event — and send power to a single point so that the goal can be fulfilled.

Think of the point-person as the point of the arrow. The point is the portion of the arrow that "does the work," but the shaft, feathers, bow and archer are equally as important to hitting the target.

The point person never needs to return any of this energy to those giving it. The point person need only do his or her best in the event — the common goal. In so doing — win or lose — the investment of power is "paid back."

In addition to sports, power-point relationships are often seen in politics, the arts, spiritual groups, and, less frequently, in business and marriage. In a marriage, it can work as long as it is understood that partner A's success is the goal of both partner A and partner B — and that partner A's success in and of itself is sufficient for partner B. If partner B wants something more from partner A or partner A's success, then it's a contract or common-goal relationship.

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In relationships — as in all things — there is a lot of room for negotiation. As the saying goes, "You don't get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate."

Let's say someone with whom you're in a recreational relationship calls you up and asks you out. Although it would be fun to go out, you have four hours committed to stuffing envelopes, the result of which could further your goal. Rather than automatically saying, "No, I can't make it," present the situation to your friend and see if he or she (let's say he) has any creative solutions.

Maybe he'll offer to come over and help stuff while chatting. This will still take four hours, but it might be more fun. Maybe he will come over and get the work done in two hours, which leaves two newly freed hours for other pursuits. Maybe he will hire someone to stuff all the envelopes, and you are free for the whole evening. The solutions are endless, and creating them is part of relating.

There are few "pure" relationships — most cross lines, combining one type of relationship with another. Relationships also change over time, evolving — or deteriorating — from one type to another.

It's obvious that — far from being a "loner" as you pursue your goal — you will be relating with many people for many reasons. In fact, you may well be interacting with far more people than you currently are.

Knowing the type of relationships that are available helps you choose the type of relationships that will allow you to best fulfill your dreams.

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