Religious Oregon teens wear ‘Gay Is Not OK’ shirts to school to protest lack of ‘straight day’

[el_bryanto]

45. What is the value of a relationship - that's a big question

I'll take one - perspective. Even if you don't believe in anything but the physical world, it's still a big fucking world.

Consider all of the experiences you have had up to this point in your life. All the choices you made, all the moral quanderies you faced, all the beautiful and horrible things you've seen, all the emotions you've felt, everything that brought you to this moment in time. Now multiply that by 7 billion other humans. Now add to that all of the natural world - the animals the plants everything. We swim in an ocean of reality. If you only stay in your own head, and don't build relationships with other people, than you only see with your very limited perspective - that's not meant as insult - the most brilliant sensitive person on earth still only has a very narrow window to look through.

Reaching out to others grants you another side to the view of the world. Lets you glimpse, at least for a moment, what they see and how they see it. That's why it's good to make friends, to be interested in people, to read great books, and experience great art (which are ways to connect to people you haven't met) because the more you can do that the more perspective you have. Connecting with nature, through experience or science, also provides valuable insights.

It is a bit like the blind men who went to see the elephant, a Jain parable.

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today."

They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.

"Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man who touched his leg.

"Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the second man who touched the tail.

"Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.

"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.

"It is like a huge wall," said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.

"It is like a solid pipe," Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.

They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?" They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features what you all said."

"Oh!" everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right..

Obviously not all relationships are good - there are abusive relationships as well. But that is one benefit of having a relationship.

Bryant