Recognizing the Emotional Content in Everyday Relationships

 

Recognizing The Emotional Content in Everyday Relationships

 

Recently, if someone had asked me the throwaway question, “so how’s your day going?”, my likely (superficial) response would have been something like, “just fine, thanks”. Most anyone asking this bland question is being polite and trying to make a social connection, neither expecting nor wanting to hear your story.  However, the truth is that as I reflect on my relatively “typical” days I realize they can be loaded with important and meaningful relationships, each with emotional content deserving recognition and appreciation. Collectively, these “touches” can amount to a surprisingly broad gamut of feelings and experiences, as they did for me when I originally drafted this essay, which was on May 18, when I wrote about the previous day. After a couple of weeks of editing it several times I now offer these thoughts to you.

There were highs…May 17 was a day crowded with positive, constructive relationships like the one with the two dear friends, 90+ years of age and still as sharp as tacks. We had hosted them for the Padres 7 – 0 win over the Colorado Rockies at Petco Park. During the game, at the Salute to Veterans, the husband stood proudly with the other veterans, young and old, to receive the appreciation and respect of all attendees. I learned after the Salute that our guest had been a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force and had earned a Distinguished Flying Cross for his extraordinary valor during a specific mission (“First Lieutenant…pressed his attack through intense enemy ground fire, strafing enemy gun positions and personally destroying one observation post…” in the Korean War. Feelings: admiration and friendship.

There were lows…I learned from Stath Karras, my successor at the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate (BMC), that Gail Gill, wife of long-time BMC Chair Ian Gill, had passed away a few days earlier of complications from a recent surgery.  Ian and Gail have been through hell together, fighting her health issues side-by-side over many years but it still broke my heart to hear that he lost her. I will never understand why bad things happen to good people.  Sorrow and sympathy.

There were enjoyable reminders of the past…at lunch at Pacifica Del Mar with good friends, he from my private Catholic high school in suburban Chicago--Lisle, Illinois and she, a long-time friend from my wife’s private Catholic college in Dubuque, Iowa. Memories stirred up by our conversation were priceless. During those eight years of high school and college, 1956 – 1964, to a person we all agreed we had been kids with not a clue about how lucky we all were to have loving parents, who despite their modest means managed to pay for private educations for us. We laughed about graduating from college with only vague thoughts about what we wanted to be when we grew up, yet over time building successful careers. Fun.

There were keen hopes for the future…for seeing our Chicago friends again on a more regular basis as they visit their Rancho Santa Fe son more often as the pandemic subsides. Hope for the future.

                                                                     ...for our grandsons, who joined us for dinner at our home on May 18, with the younger of the two highly enthusiastic about his new-found talent at track, running for the team at La Costa Canyon (LCC) high school, and also excited about his new job bussing tables at a local restaurant (and  servers sharing the tips with him).   Our older grandson is excited about his plans to attend Gonzaga University in the fall, almost as a welcome relief after having the pandemic slaughter his senior year at LCC. Feeling: unconditional love

                                                                     …for future post-COVID vacation plans and bucket lists using the money and miles recouped from the 20-day (but recently canceled) cruise we had fully worked out and paid for, starting this fall in London, going through Dublin and Belfast  to Greenland and Iceland before coming back to Norway, Denmark and Sweden.  Frustration was the strongest emotion, also disappointment.     

There were random acts of kindness…by the usher at Petco Park who, recognizing us from our most recent ballgame two weeks earlier, on his own accord arranged for a server to take our food and beverage orders and deliver the food to us at our seats, practices which are a tad outside standard operating procedure at Petco currently.  Appreciation!

There were acts of generosity by persons unknown…by the literally thousands of unseen donors whose contributions of blood enabled me to receive injections of critically needed immunoglobulin first thing in the morning on May 17. The immunoglobulin does wonders in boosting my otherwise deficient immune system.  Deep gratitude.

There was caring…by those who offered the services of home health care nurses as needed, to follow-up and monitor the progress of my recovery from the Mohs (skin cancer) and plastic surgeries I had last week. And for assigning the same two professional nurses who had just completed their assignments with me the previous week, dating from surgery I had had in mid-October 2020.   Feelings of gratitude.

You get the point, I am sure. On a “normal” day we all interact with many others, creating relationships with substantive and meaningful emotional content.  There is no doubt I have taken this emotional content for granted in the past.  But now, whether it is due to experience from the pandemic, advancing age, simply a long-overdue sensitivity to the emotional content of relationships, or all of the above, I intend to pay more attention and to value them more than I ever have before.

If after reading about hurrying in one of my recent essays you think you still can’t afford to take the time to get in touch with the emotional side of your relationships, it is your choice, and your loss, I’d add. The emotions enrich your life. I know I’m sounding like a preacher here, but I’m reminded of an old saying I attribute to one of my German grandmothers or an elderly aunt.  The saying/proverb goes “Too soon old, too late smart.”   Live and learn.