People crave being truly known, not just making small talk. The speaker contrasts shallow thirty-minute conversations with rare, hours-long relationships built on trust, silence without awkwardness, and real vulnerability. The question: are you building those deeper connections?
I'm in relationship with this path I'm walking on and I'm in relationship to the nature around me. But what I mean is human relationships, as I started to think about it, they're probably. Our relationships are probably in the top three most complicated things that we deal with. Relationships are complicated because people are. We change, we evolve, we grow, we adjust. You know, things happen to us and they affect who we are, which has an impact on the relationships that we have with those around us. And so I think it's intrinsic to human beings that we all desire to know and be known by others. We desire to know and be known by others. Some of us are a little more closed off. Some of us wear our heart on our sleeve. But ultimately we do want to have connection. We're looking for a tribe, we're looking for friends, we're looking for a group, we're looking for belonging and acceptance. And that happens through relationships. And so something to consider is that different relationships have different value levels. I heard this the other day and I thought it was kind of funny. The difference between 30 minute relationships and multiple hour relationships. I thought that was an interesting way of putting it. In other words, we have relationships that they're good for about 30 minutes, you know, and there's nothing wrong with that. In other words, once we get packed past the small talk and the chit chat and we're kind of through that, there's really nothing else to say. Or it just could be that that's as much of that person as you can stand or as much of you as that person can stand. We all have many of those. I would assume those are a little bit easier. Everybody can be on their best behavior for 30 minutes. My question is, how are we doing with our multiple hour relationships? These are the kind of relationships where you can sit with somebody or do something with somebody for hours and you can share, share and there's value. And awkward silences aren't awkward. These are the kind of relationships where you don't have to hide, where you trust that person and they trust you. Where you're not in competition, you're not trying to one up somebody, you're not trying to talk about how awesome you are, you're not going back and forth tit for tat. These are true, powerful, valuable relationships that also tend to be a little few and far between as well. They're not quite as common as our 30 minute relationships. So how are we doing on those, myself included?
