Life is a Garden of Relationships
rambling thoughts on the relationship as a life philosophy ☼ crossing out a list of goals and dreams ☼ a book and brush rec for autumn
Everything good in life comes from a relationship. This is something I have started to think about as I continue to work, write and explore the wonders of friendship, partnership and family. There is a universal understanding that love, companionship and community are comprised of relational forces, and that to cultivate any of them, we must show up. Healthy relationships are constituted by mutual engagement, the offering of time, energy and attention between two or more people. These observations are obvious, considering we see them played out in everyday life and exaggerated in popular media. We grow up navigating the dynamics of friendship, family and romance through a relational lens, trite slogans like “treat others how you want to be treated” pointing towards what it means to be a good navigator.
Trite sayings, no matter how cringe, always turn out to resemble the truth, and often in multiple ways. I think the base philosophy we have around building healthy social relationships can be applied to nonsocial too: the more you give, the more you get. Be in the world as you want to become.
Food, money, exercise, art, mental health, sexuality, a career, a bus ride, a couch: Everything we experience in this world, material and immaterial, is a result of our relationships.
Here is a simple one: We have relationships with our jobs—the more time, energy and thought we put into those jobs (and their surrounding industries) and we might start to call them careers. We also have relationships with the things that we do: writing, reading, cooking. The more time we give to these things, the more they become a part of our lives. The more they become a part of our lives, the more we grow into them (as writers—learning about the craft, as readers—noticing new things, as cooks—becoming more capable of what we can make). Perhaps, most importantly, we have relationships with moments in time: a walk, a meal, a conversation with a friend. The more attention we put towards those moments, the more we get out of them.
I suppose the common thread between all of these things is that the more we show up, the more we get (or the more we grow).
Love, for example, is not something that arrives at our doorstep, conjured by a manifestation. It is something that we build with another person, a dynamic process in which two people choose, every day, to create a relationship with each other, in which both responsible for the ethos of that relationship, including how they shape and respond to their shared and individual experiences. I have started to think about other things in the same way: writing, for example, is not a task. One does not become a writer by sitting down on a single occasion and writing an essay, poem or book, dreaming towards a moment in which some form of external validation (an award, a job, a milestone) deems them a writer. One becomes a writer by entering an ongoing relationship with the art and process of writing itself, in which the dynamics are constantly changing, based on how one feels, thinks and interacts with the world. If I neglect a writing project for over a few weeks, I will experience the result of that neglect: the plot is no longer present, the motivation is a fraction of what it was, and the magic of the idea itself is lost in an outline I wrote over a month ago, in which the words and thoughts begin to feel foreign.
While this frame of thinking may not be novel, the questions I have been asking myself within it tend to reveal opportunities to claim more responsibility over my experience of Life with a capital L: What is my relationship with art? What is my relationship with guilt? What is my relationship with this commute? How we think, feel, act and react with the world around us affects every aspect of our lives. Examining the relationships in my life that are neither social nor romantic reminds me of the personal responsibility I have over Life and highlights the opportunity I have to take ownership of it. Ultimately, I find the responsibility freeing. If I am aspiring towards something, I can nurture my relationship with it (writing, learning Spanish, being present, keeping in touch with friends) to make it real.
I always used to imagine myself arriving at Life, working as an artist or directing a company or traveling the world with someone I love, as if our lives were stores stocked with options, shiny and colorful items on every shelf, and we were their customers, engaging with the inventory as passive consumers. As I grow older, however, life seems less like a grocery store and more like a garden, an ecosystem of creation that we are intrinsic to. With simple decisions, we influence the things that grow and die every day, watering and fertilizing, protecting certain plants from pests and losing sight of others in the weeds.
With these decisions, we cultivate a life: I am going to write today, I am going to talk to my partner and try to understand how they feel, I am going to talk to myself and try to understand how I feel, I am going to notice the sky as I wait for the bus, I am going to move my body.
When we choose to live as an active part of the ecosystem, anything seems possible. I think we lose the plot when we begin to see Life as something that happens to us, as opposed to something that we co-create.
At the moment, I am sitting on a plane. There have been many plane rides in which I view the commute as something that happens to me, waiting for the ride to end, safe in the passive pessimism of a tired traveler, thinking: I hate flying nowadays; Adults shouldn’t bring their kids on planes; This food is literally the worst thing I have ever eaten in my entire life. There have also been many plane rides in which I choose to experience the ride as something I am a part of, where I think: What do I want to do in this time? What snacks do I want to eat? What movies do I want to watch? How can I make this ride good? When I choose to experience the flight as something I am a part of, I almost always end up thinking of it as a writing retreat, working on my book (or this newsletter), enjoying the cute faces of the children yelling like maniacs and engaging with the airline staff, who are almost always eager to resonate a tone of joy with another.
Thinking about our lives as a culmination of relationships—social and nonsocial, conceptual and figurative—with ourselves, others and the world around us makes me excited to cultivate a good one. I want to build more engaged relationships across every part of my life. Furthermore, I want to be intentional about the relationships that I choose to cultivate in the first place. Akin to how it is impossible to be in healthy, fulfilling, engaged relationships with one thousand people at once, it is impossible to sustain relationships with one thousand things that we care about. As someone who tends to self-prescribe high expectations and aspire towards several things at once, this is a helpful realization.
To end this little rant, I thought it’d be nice to share the nonsocial relationships that I want to focus on (as well as the ones I don’t). While I have crossed out many previous relationships through trial and error, the exercise of saying “I will never do this” is still helpful for all of the things I think about doing but never have the time for. For example: Thinking that I will learn Japanese and Chinese next (when I have yet to learn Spanish). Allowing myself to think “I will never do this” allows myself to feel “I am okay never doing this,” which clears the heart and mind of a chronic aspirer.
Here’s my short list:
I want to live more than I work (relationship with my job and work ethic)
I want to cherish and celebrate my friends and family (relationship with time)
I want to build and share a sense community in the places that I live (relationship with hosting, entertaining and keeping in touch)
I want to be physically healthy and able (relationship with food and exercise)
I want to help the people I love achieve their dreams (relationship with the goals of my loved ones)
I want to a career that makes it easy to take care of myself and those around me (relationship with my industry)
I want to publish a book and become a writer of fiction (relationship with writing—on the page and in the world)
I want to speak Spanish (relationship with the language, including my efforts to learn)
I want to experience the world (relationship with travel)
I want to express myself through music (relationship with learning music theory and production)
I want to learn how to DJ and curate my own parties (relationship with music and DJing)I want to be a content creator (relationship with content creation and social media)I want to be a filmmaker (relationship with creating film and video)I want to be a serial entrepreneur (relationship with starting and running business)I want to learn Chinese (relationship with the language)I want to learn Japanese (relationship with the language)I want to create an independent magazine (relationship with creating and sustaining a publication)I want to be a photographer (relationship with the camera and the business behind it)I want to be a videographer (relationship with creating videos and content)I want to start my own creative agency (relationship with starting a business and managing clients)
a book and a brush for autumn
Pachinko (Book): I started reading Pachinko by Min Jin Lee and…Wow! Highly, highly, highly recommend. I have been thinking a lot about how colonial powers (e.g. United States, UK, Japan, many European countries) tend to be the most romanticized. I think this is especially relevant when it comes to Japan, a country whose culture and tourism seems to win the obsession of everyone. Although I am absolutely in love with Japan, it sometimes feels like they pulled off the best marketing campaign ever created (via anime, food trends and products), considering no one really thinks or talks about the atrocities they committed as a colonial power that dismantled, starved and stole from the people of Korea, Taiwan, China and Southeast Asia—especially Korea. This book is an important portrayal of Korean lives during the Japanese occupation.
Suri (Toothbrush): Okay, this is a weird rec, but hear me out…HAVING AN AESTHETIC TOOTHBRUSH IS LIFE-CHANGING! I am actually excited to brush my teeth in the AM and PM. This sounds like a sponsorship but it isn’t…I just really love this toothbrush. It’s sustainably made and sexy AF. ☷
With love,
Your favorite capybara ~ AKA Travis Zane
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