It would make sense to start this series with what I mean by relationality.
So what do I mean? I feel drawn to share some things I know instead, a format that, I realize, might secretly be inspired by Sasha's recent post.
*one deep breath*
I know that relationality is a thing.
I know that there is not a lot written about it already and I know that there are more people like me who are interested in making it an explicit thing.
In some sense, we also do know a lot about it, but it’s mostly experiential. It dwells in the implicit, in the felt.
I know that the word relationality is a pointer towards something bigger, more complex than I know how to describe with words. But I do know some of the pieces of the thing.
It is something that feels so present in every moment that it's invisible to me most of the time.
It's something that I can probe with consciousness though and then it becomes more tangible. Patterns of relating emerge when I pay attention to them. Hidden relations emerge that usually hide in plain sight.
I know I am relating to myself right now, even though I am not thinking about it. Well I am now, but I was not just a second ago. I am in relation to the truck outside my window and the beeping sound that it's making. Even more obviously, I am in relation to it as I am writing these words. I am in relation to my father who's in the other room and in relation to the birds on a nearby tree.
It may be an ambivalent, perhaps un-interesting relation but the relation is there. I also know that for some reason I have been drawn to notice more and more things that I am in relation to, even if parts of me feel like it's a waste of time.
I know there seem to be more relevant relations and less relevant ones. I know that it makes me sad to think about how these judgments of relevance are made and who in me is making them. This sadness seems like one of the reasons why I am interested in relationality. I sense a potential in being able to more consciously choose which relations matter and how I want to hold them.
I know that relationality is also a skill, a practice. It's something I have been getting better at. The core move of relationality is to find enough consciousness to step outside of the relation and stand far enough apart to be able to ask - is this a healthy way to relate? is this how I want to relate?
When I say relationality I also mean something like a way of living, a stance. A care for relations and the process of relating. I know that it feels to me like relations and their quality is at the center of wellbeing and we actually have a lot of control over it.
This feels even more meaningful because of my favorite quote from Viktor Frankl, a holocaust survivor: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
It strikes me that a person who found themselves in the worst of hells on earth was able to find freedom and meaning in remembering that he can choose how to relate to his situation.
This is why even though in safe and comfortable circumstances relationality may feel like an abstract, soft area of interest, I want to remember that it can also be a very concrete, and life-saving inquiry.
I also know that some people seem to be attuned to relational dynamics and others less so. I don't know why that is, but I know that I want to speak about what I am seeing so that maybe others can start to notice too.
And I know I want others to speak up too. Yes, you.
I know I want to live in a world where people care about this and know how to talk about it. This means acknowledging that a lot of it will be hard to speak about at first and that we need patience and faith to look at this layer of reality together.
I know that magical things happen when two or more humans can go meta on the relational dynamic between them and actually choose how they want to relate together. Words like connection, intimacy, alignment come to mind. I hesitate to say that this is the thing we need to make the world a better place although it certainly feels like that to me.
I know that I would like to somehow bring relationality into the field of AI, politics, big business. Into places where humans in power tend to relate to things in ways that might not be healthy and the actions resulting from their unhealthy relations can affect millions.
I know I want there to be some structures that make people or groups pause and reflect on how they are relating to themselves, to others, to their goals or the Earth. I know this would do something good, although it feels hard to prove.
I know I could go on with this list, but I also know the initial impulse has now passed and I feel complete in some way that is more visceral than my mind's sense of completion.
I know that this felt good to express.
Photo credits go to Scott Webb
things I know about relationality