 If you're a close follower of GEQ, you've heard me say before that love is an art. And for systematic people like me, that can be a scary reality to face! So I'm here to say that there's good news: even art forms have underlying 'rules' that we can learn and apply. For example, in music, there's a rhythm and a key, which provide the structure for creative expression to flourish within. Just like art, relationships will never be broken down to pure science - but there are some foundational principles that serve as a framework for every healthy relationship. Knowing and applying them won't guarantee you harmonic relationships, but it will most definitely set the tone.
 One of my favorite ‘fun facts’ about myself is that I got married in college when I was just 20 years old. Megan had turned 21 exactly 7 days before our marriage (which proved clutch for our honeymoon in Colorado, as we wouldn’t have been able to rent a car otherwise!). At the time we got married, I had a year left of schooling, and Megan had a full two years left en route to her Master’s degree.
In our generation, that raises some eyebrows and drops some jaws! After all, before deciding when to get married, there are some other considerations to make, like, you know, who to get married to, and if you even want to be married. For us, getting married, getting married to each other, and getting married young were all pretty simple decisions, despite their gravity, and I’m happy to walk you through our journey.
 We all want rich friendships and relationships in life - we want to love and be loved by those closest to us. But the tricky thing about cultivating love, besides the fact that it can be an abstract goal to begin with, is that we can’t actually control whether or not we accomplish it. It takes two to tango, as they say - and they’re right. We cannot simply will our way into meaningful friendships.
That said, it doesn’t have to be a guessing game. Any good dancer knows how to lead a partner, making it easy to anticipate each step and move in beautiful unison. Similarly, when we pursue rich relationships not just as our own goal, but with both participants in mind, we create an environment that sets us up for success.
 Having graduated with my degree in finance, I'm admittedly much better with numbers than I am with art. Even back when I was a violist in my high school orchestra, I was a functional note-player at best - definitely not an artist.
Yet, just as we can't fit a 3-dimensional shape into a two-dimensional plane, we can't turn love into an equation. It won't work. That's like bad news for my fellow finance majors, but fortunately, there is one easy way to become a better artist, and you can do it today.  We all have competing priorities in life - many things we want to accomplish. In an effort to manage our lives effectively and win in every area, we develop time-management skills, use a calendar / planner, and discover ways that we can do things more efficiently.
All that is awesome. I love being efficient, and I think getting stuff done is a great feeling. But if one of our goals is to have meaningful friendships in life - people that really know us, trust us, and love us - we'll want to take a dramatically different approach. |
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