Quality Time

I sometimes think I will never live down the blog on “being busy”. When I wrote about being busy way back in March (http://happinesssoup.blogspot.com/2009/03/on-being-busy.html) I didn’t think I would still be the recipient of so much leg pulling and comments like “whoops, better not say I’ve been busy” or “you just wouldn’t understand – I really have been busy” ……. Hmmm, but at least these comments are delivered with a large grin and I have always wanted long legs......

Anyway, I was thinking the other day about being busy and having to squeeze things (friends, family…) into ones schedule; and thought back to when (70’s, 80’s?) the expression “quality time” became a popular mantra; how we should make every precious minute we spent with children, spouse, parents, friends count.

I think this quote from Henry David Thoreau (the book, Walden) a nice reminder of what “quality time” should be:

“We meet at very short intervals, not having had time to acquire any new value for each other. We meet at meals three times a day, and give each other a new taste of that old musty cheese that we are. We have had to agree on a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we need not come to open war.”

A little while ago I wrote about Building Connections, about family mission statements – go to the following link if you want to re-read it:
http://happinesssoup.blogspot.com/2009/07/building-connections.html

Relationships

I haven’t been away. I’ve been having the time of my life being entertained by young nieces and nephews, in-laws and in-laws of in-laws who have been in SA from at least 3 corners of the earth to celebrate Grandmere’s 80th birthday. It has been great fun and when great uncle Pierre returns to France on Saturday night we will be back to normal, I think! And in between all this my PC contracted a massive virus, went to the repair shop, then back again and again, operating systems were uninstalled, re-installed, uninstalled and so on; I am hoping everything is now ok…. fingers crossed.

So with all the family stuff happening, seeing old faces and meeting new ones, renewing friendships, I thought this blog should be about relationships and how they affect our lives, how we age, our happiness, our friendships, our business lives……

Relationships

For 70 + years an incredible program designed to study mental and physical well being has been conducted by Harvard University. The study was designed to find out what made people happy and has examined a group of 268 Harvard students over their entire lives.

Professor George Vaillant has directed the study for the past 40 years and this is what he says about general well-being and aging well:

"That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people."

And

"It is social aptitude not intellectual brilliance or parental social class, that leads to successful aging."

Tom Peters has this to say about relationships:

Basics #1. "It's always 'the people.' " It may be glib, but in this instance I don't care. Network, keep your promises, behave decently. Your are as good as your relationships. Period. Short term. Long term. Good times. Tough times. This is the time (though all times are, in fact, the time) to "over" invest in relationship building and maintenance.

The Trust Issue

The other evening a bunch of us were sitting around chatting about the “rule breakers” on the roads… you all know about the people who go through red lights, ignore stop streets and treat solid white lines as extended dotted lines…. And what seemed to be the absolute favourite, the people who just don’t let you into the traffic getting onto a motorway – yeah, go figure.

And then the conversation turned to the alarming number of people who don’t have number plates on their cars…. Either front or back or none at all!!!! The main reason for this little trend is to avoid being caught in the speed cameras… I am not sure why they don’t just paint a middle finger pointing skywards in space where the number should be.

I know a couple of people who don’t have number plates and when I raised this with them they just laugh and change the subject. I kinda feel a bit iffy and miffy about this – they are breaking the law and proud of it.

So this is where our conversation led to….how do you like doing business with a person like this? He/she blatantly disregards the “rules” including the speed limit? So how much other dishonest stuff does this guy/gal do?

And then the chat went further and these things were raised:

How much do you trust your business partner/colleague who cheats on his tax? (and don’t say everyone does *grin*)

How much do you trust your business partner/colleague who cheats on his/her life partner? You might have even heard them rattling off a whopping great lie to the person waiting at home.

How much do you trust your business partner/colleague who claims all sorts of stuff on his householders insurance that he didn’t have?

How much do you trust your business partner/colleague who can get you really cheap electronic equipment through a contact who knows about stuff falling off a truck?

This list could be endless. But it makes one think doesn’t it.