Eleven Hints for life – 5 of 11

March 14, 2014

5. It takes only a minute to get a crush on someone, an hour to like someone, and a day to love someone-but it takes a lifetime to forget someone. – Unknown

We could probably argue the timeline in this quote forever; however, the underlying points would stay the same. The whole “love at first sight” thing is probably the crush part. We oftencrush initially mistake a crush for love. A crush is defined as in the Urban Dictionary as “a burning desire to be with someone who you find very attractive and extremely special.” Most times the heat in that burning desire is based mainly upon a sexual attraction and it is somewhat telling that crushes are most often associated with the young, who have yet to learn how to control those desires.

friendsYou can probably establish whether you like someone in any hour; however they might also be able to fake it for an hour. The kind of shallow relationship that you can establish in an hour is probably fairly fragile. Sure I can say that I like you after an hour, but maybe what I’m really saying is I don’t not-like you – you haven’t done anything to turn me off yet.  At least I’ve moved off neutral in that hour and hopefully the next few hours will reinforce that feeling. For some the subsequent hours may uncover things about that person that they kept hidden initially and you’ll reconsider whether you like them or not. Time will turn that “like” into friendship (or more) or reveal a bad initial decision that is best put behind you.

I really don’t agree that you can love someone in a day, but you can make a good start at it. I think you can get beyond crush and maybe get to “like’ in that day, but love takes a few more experiences than you can get in within a day. Just like the comments about liking someone, it is possible that you’ve only seen what they carefully wanted you to see in that day. To truly young couplelove someone you have to go through more things, more emotions, more ups and downs and you can’t do that in a day. Love carries with it some unspoken extra criteria – trust being one of the most important. Love means opening up yourself to that person and that requires trust. You don’t usually build that level of trust in a day.

For some there will be a trip through all three levels. They can move from an initial crush to discovering that they really like the person too. When the passion that may have fueled the crush is tempered by time and circumstances and you have a like for that person, there is the opportunity to move on to the next level and truly love them. For most the relationships either die when the crush fades or they settle in at the friendship level and let it go at that. That’s not a bad thing; you need friends – people that you like. Maybe you can even trust them to a certain degree, just not enough to open your sole to them.

Finally, I agree with the thought that it takes a lifetime to forget someone, even if they never made it further than the crush level. Once we take time to focus upon anyone and single them out  beyond being just a face in the crowd they are stamped into our minds forever. They may not be someone that you think about every day; but, I guarantee you that there will be triggers embedded somewhere in your brain that will bring their faces back into view and maybe you will even remember their name. For sure you will remember whatever the circumstances were of your relationship with them. I don’t believe that you will ever really forget them. Hopefully those memories will be pleasant and not negative.

Find someone to like today and start making memories.

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Posted by Norm Werner

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you…

March 24, 2013

 “I wonder how many people I’ve looked at all my life and never seen?” (John Steinbeck) from the Jack’s Winning Words blog. You could also state this thought, “I wonder how many people I know that I don’t really know?”

As I get older I’ve become a bit more introspective about thoughts like Steinbeck’s saying. I suspect we all know people that we haven’t really taken the time to see (to know). We may even hang out with them and call them friends or acquaintances, but we really have never taken the time and made the effort to get to know them.

It’s hard with some people to really get to know them, because they might be the types who don’t open up very much or like to share anything about themselves. Many times the circumstances in which we “know” someone don’t facilitate really getting to know them, especially if we know them in a business setting. I belong to a local Chamber of Commerce referral networking group in Milford and we use one-on-one meetings to facilitate getting to know our members better.

coffee meetingFor the one-on-one meetings we each commit to meet with another member for an hour long session of getting to better understand that person and their business, so that we can do a better job of giving them referrals. While there is an obvious business reason for the meeting, most members spend most of the meeting time just talking about themselves and their families and lives. It helps to really get to know them better. I haven’t come away from a single one-on-one without a much better understand of that person, as well as an appreciation for what they do for a living.

Most of the time you won’t have the artificial mechanism of a planned one-on-one meeting with someone that you might want to get to know better; however, just a quick invite like, “Let’s get together for a coffee sometime” can provide you with the setting to use to learn more about that person. The key is not to just throw out that line, but to mean it and to follow up on setting a date for that coffee get together.

Of course, one can also take Steinbeck’s message to be that we look at people in a defocused way and don’t “see” what’s there to be seen, written on their faces or in their mannerisms. As we read about tragedies like the recent teenage suicide of a Middle School student, the phrase “I just didn’t see the signs” is used over and over. People were looking at that young man and not seeing his anguish or problems. They didn’t stop and get to know him well enough to be able to intercede by seeing his problems.

Maybe if someone had seen the signs they might have stopped him and asked if he wanted to talk or if they could help. Perhaps they were too consumed walking along and starting down at their phones to notice him. Perhaps we all are too consumed by modern distractions like that which tend to take our focus away from the people around us. Stop and look around you. Whom do you really see when you look?

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Posted by Norm Werner