Month: June 2011

A few months ago, a friend asked me how I knew it was time to make a change in my relationship. At the time, they were experiencing a number of things in their relationship that didn’t work well for them.

There are a number of considerations but a big one for me was KNOWING that I needed more from the current situation than what I was getting, had been getting or was likely going to be able to negotiate. It took a long time to accept that I wasn’t getting as much out of life as I could have been and Rachel actually saw it a lot sooner than I did. About a year months ago I came home from work and she was crying. When I asked her why, she simply mentioned that she wished we had met after she had finished school.

The other factor was dreading going home or dreading hearing Rachel come home because I knew that I was going to feel something that wasn’t within my easy control – I would feel bad, under-accomplished, unlovable or lost. I would feel this REGARDLESS of the conversation I had with her or what was going on. Being in her presence was enough for me to start automatic behaviors that I didn’t consciously trigger. That is scary as far as I am concerned because I like being in control of my emotions.

It all comes down to the same thing though. When you open-up to the possibility that things need to change, they needed to change a while ago and that you actually NEED them to change in order to restore the minimum level of happiness to your life, your choice becomes a lot clearer than “hang in there”. Once you accept this possibility that change is needed, you’ve likely come too far to go back to thinking everything will be fine.

On April 5, 1968, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Robert F. Kennedy delivered a speech that is referred to as On the Mindless Menace of Violence. Wikipedia has a version of the text which is fairly close to the audio posted on YouTube.

Much of the physical violence that he makes reference to is behind us but the message is still valid. We, as people, should work hard to not inflict suffering upon other people. People need to be afforded the dignity to be who they are without fear of intimidation, violence, ridicule or abuse.

Whenever we tear at the fabric of life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

I cry when I read that. I feel a tremendous amount of shame each time the words register with me. I get no sense of satisfaction knowing that I have done everything reasonable in my power to ease human suffering. I hurt because my actions are hurting others. I haven’t been the man that I can be.

Better is still something that I need to do.

Robert Kennedy was shot and died two months after he gave the speech. The world lost a leader with enough compassion to motivate good men to stay strong in the face of frightening change, to empower them to facilitate the social shift that will eventually become equality of all people. More than 40 years after his death, we are not there. We can get there, but only when each one of us make the decision to judge people not for their race or colour, not for their views or their beliefs, but for their hearts, for their potential for good, and for the actions they take to help ease suffering and promote well being as these are the essential qualities that make up everyone’s humanity.