The Call of Character by Mari Ruti

Author:Mari Ruti
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: PSY003000, Psychology/Applied Psychology, SOC025000, Social Science/Social Work
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2013-11-12T05:00:00+00:00

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Undoubtedly there are relationships that are worth holding on to even when they are ailing; undoubtedly we can often burrow our way through the obstacles so that the relationship once again becomes feasible and sometimes even better than before. But a simple shift in perspective might help us assess things differently in those cases where we are striving to revive a relationship that is clearly past its expiration date. If we understood relationships as fickle entities that are not always meant to endure—if we came to accept as a “given” that people have the tendency to outgrow relationships—we might be less enthusiastic about expending energy on ones that are hurtful or otherwise floundering. Even if a given relationship was once the best thing that ever happened to us, it may no longer have anything positive to contribute. Why, then, would we want to prolong it artificially (thereby slowly destroying the memory of what was once marvelous about it)? Why would we allow ourselves to get stuck in a relationship that has lost its traction?

Although some relationships obviously flourish and endure, many do not. In effect, some of our most magnificent alliances are ones that ultimately fail. By this I do not mean to advocate callousness toward our loved ones, let alone imply that we should abandon relationships carelessly. For one thing, I believe that we have an ethical obligation to the people we have loved so that we do not have the right to discard them in whichever way we want to. There are, in short, more or less honorable ways to end a relationship. At the same time, trying to mend a broken bond usually merely postpones the inevitable. In addition, whenever we take it for granted that saving a relationship is better than breaking it, we assume that the gold standard for relationships is longevity rather than, say, the relationship’s continued ability to animate us. But why should we assume this? And why should we rank our loyalty to a faltering, spirit-dampening relationship above the part of us that is hungry for a different kind of life? Looked at in this light, relationship losses are not so much failures as important vehicles for change. They force us to leave some things behind so as to create space for other things; they teach us that a certain amount of death is necessary for rebirth.

When we are lucky, our relationships change with us, so that there is no tension between them and our ability to reach new incarnations of ourselves. And there may even be times where we manage to recapture the luster of a relationship that has lost it. I have proposed that desire is a matter of discovering the sublime echo of the Thing in a mundane object. And I have pointed out that there is a great deal of flexibility to our desire not only in the sense that we can shift between objects, but also in the sense that we can appreciate one object in various ways at different points in time.

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