Today I went out for a walk, I do this often, as I was walking I noticed in front of me was an old couple holding hands.

It’s not something you even see a whole lot nowadays even for younger couples except for in early relationships. has stuff Fades away with time but why? Why does it change? Why do relationships not last like they used to? Some say it’s because the relationship isn’t half and half, people don’t put in their half of what they should to make it work. Well I don’t believe any relationship is half and half if you want it to work. If you can’t put in your whole 100% it’s not going to work.  Nowadays what defines putting in your hole 100%? What defines specific obligations to each relationship that makes it work? I think that’s hard to Define because each individual situation is different what would work for one won’t work for another. So that would change the obligations of each relationship? I think one of the main keys that we have lost in our society is the ability to properly communicate. What defines proper communication? Being able to express ourselves in any way we need to to help another or others understand us and our perspective, but also being open to the fact that that will not always match others. We need to learn to listen. Not just to respond but to hear what the people we care about have to say. It’s something I feel our youth has lost whether it’s through technology, whether it’s through how they were raised, how Society has taught them to be, we’ve lost our ability to communicate our needs to be able to express what we need in a relationship because we feel as though it was uncomfortable or we won’t be heard. Of course it’s uncomfortable you can’t control the other person or how they will react. That’s where trust and listening to hear and not just react comes in. It’s not all about you. In a relationship it’s about us no matter the type of relationship it is. Communication, even casually on the street in passing, is odd now days to many people. Most people look away, look down or look at their phone to avoid an Interaction. But why? Just the other day my 16 year old daughter saw mother and her daughter struggling to carry groceries home. She offered to help them, you could tell the lady needed the assistance. However, she was pretty hesitant on taking it. Why? It was an innocent girl offering assistance to help her out. I was glad she did take the assistance, but you could tell by her body language that it made her uncomfortable. She was uncertain if we had a hidden agenda or some malicious intent as many are now days. I won’t lie, I am even guilty of feeling this way a lot. But why? Many people do have hidden agendas but not always. But how do we know? I guess sometimes we don’t right away. We need to stop being so passive aggressive and afraid to stand up for ourselves in those situations.

For today’s random I’ve decided to share with you how I feel about this problem. Many people seem to think that technology nowadays has created this issue however, I don’t feel that’s to be the truth. Before technology there was books, newspapers, journals. There has always been written word. I feel it has more to do with the way we are connected. An earthquake happens and we hear about it within moments instead of weeks or months or not at all. These things have always happened, terrorism has always been a thing, kidnapping, bad governments, these things if you know history have always been there on and off throughout history. Just now days we know about it. We read about it all. Our media is so focused on the negative that we create these fears that all of society is this way. So what do we do with the fear this negativity creates? We avoid things and people to prevent these things from happening to us, even though the likelihood of them happening is very slim. Now days it’s harder to get away with crimes. But the few that do happen become a major media focus crating anxiety and fear in our society and dividing people.
But how do we fix this? How do we fix something that’s become so ingrained in our society that we don’t know what to do with it? Stop obsessing over the media and allowing it to feed you this negativity. Instead, Start saying hello it creates a chain reaction. A hello can turn into a conversation. Or you just get a smile back. Start asking your neighbors name.  What’s wrong with knowing their names? Then when you see them you can say, hello Debra or, hello John.  It starts to create a more familiar and personal relationship. It doesn’t have to be a close relationship, but it starts to create more of a community, the more Hello’s we give the more we’re going to get the more we do it the more normal it will become. It will be a process, it’s not going to be an easy one. Nothing that makes us uncomfortable ever is easy, but it would be worth it.

JSW Sheldon