I heard someone say years ago (maybe it was in a personal development course) that people are meaning-creating machines. If I say something to you, you are going to want to make it mean something, perhaps more, or less, or even different than I meant. In any situation I’m in, I’ll assign it a meaning, give it a flavour, sum it up as enjoyable or tragic or irksome.
So, today my husband sent me a link to an article called, “The Least 5 Romantic Keys to a Happy Relationship.” This arrived in my email with no preamble. The first tip was “Spend less time together” and the second one was, “Sleep apart”. What am I to make of this message?
Was he just passing on a bit of Internet frippery that someone had sent him? Was he surfing the net to find ways to salvage a marriage of 17.5 years. Was he too timid to broach this subject face-to-face?
I could make the email mean lots of different things, my line of thinking shaped by the mood of my mind in the moment. There’s a word in Sanskrit called avidya which is defined as delusion or ignorance that describes the way we humans jump to conclusions. Much better to check out what the reality of a situation or conversation or the opinions we have of each other.
Nevertheless ‘ I’m still scratching my head about the last three “Romantic Keys to a Happy Relationship” in the article:
Marry an ugly stupid man
Lie to yourself
Schedule sex
If you’re game, you can check the article out yourself on cracked.com