Interpersonal Interaction and The Boiler Room
I just called Julio.
He’s the guy that has been servicing our boiler for years. We had an appointment to get the annual
boiler service done next week but I have had to juggle all
of the long term appointments I had made prior to my unexpected selection for jury duty. I just can’t be home and Lizzy doesn’t want
the work to be done when I’m not here.
When a question comes up during the boiler service she wants me to deal with it—that’s just the
way the boiler work has always been. It is my job.
It used to bother me a little bit that she doesn’t want to
have that responsibility when it is inconvenient for me to be here. I have resented that I have to be on the hook
for the boiler appointment. Over the
years I have realized that it is the nature of relationships (partnerships
really) that responsibility gets either naturally or artificially
distributed. That is to say either the
parties fall into a pattern of accepting portions of the work without prompting
or one of them has to take a leadership role and assign the tasks or, a third
possibility, they balk and run, dissolving the relationship. “Accepting the portions” does not necessarily
mean doing so without discussion or debate, it just means that the
apportionment is mutually acceptable in the end, without rancor or
distaste. Our marriage has been a study
in such 'give and take' and I like to think that we are successful on that
count.
Similarly, emotional distribution of responsibility also
takes a sort of ‘work’--the work of negotiating the mine field of personal
emotional interaction. Between two people
(or any group of people for that matter) there are situations that need to be
‘worked out’. Married couples sometimes
call this ‘give and take’. One would
think that the combination of just two people, working out a position on a
single problem would be a simple thing.
It is not simple. If it were only
for the time and space aspect of a problem (who is picking up the kid from day
care and what time? for example) it would be simple but history of the
relationship (how the negotiation played out in the past), the physical
condition of the persons involved (who didn’t sleep well last night or who
feels poorly for eating cold chili out of the fridge at midnight?), the mental condition of the individuals (who
is going to traffic court later in the day or who has to drive over to Mom’s
house to deal with the Alzheimer’s, the home care worker and the social
services administration?…) the irritants and the mutations of Life are
incalculable.
It is not all bad though.
A walk outside on a beautiful Fall day when the leaves are bright and
the Indian Summer has brought warm breezes just might make the sorriest husband
in the world amenable to anything his wife desires. I think it is safe to say that there is
no way to predict the direction a ‘personal interaction’ might take. We live our lives bouncing like a pinball off
of the circumstances and personalities of others. We do our best to ‘divine’ the way a
conversation or an interaction might progress based on how we feel ourselves
and how similar conversations and interactions have gone in the past. We must, out of necessity, live with the
uncertainties of life and personality and circumstance.
Most importantly, we must use every bit of our strength to
be the best person we can be so that those people who are important to us (and
ultimately all beings in our universe) can count on us and know us and depend
on the consistency of Us.
I have to go down to the boiler room now and tidy up a
little bit. I don’t want Julio to come
in to a messy place. I hope he is in a
good mood today.
