“No, this is OUR walk.”
Here’s a brief story in pictures…
I took the first after parting ways with a couple members of my family.
I took the second upon briefly reuniting with them before parting ways once again.
The story is a subtle but poignant and thought-provoking study in the way we humans find meaning and connection with, through, in, and around social groupings. That’s actually ALL of human life in some way, shape, or form.
My brother and I were mostly (practically entirely) raised by a single mother. This means we spent a lot of time together, and much of it as that particular grouping of 3. My mother once taught me that possible interpersonal combinations increase exponentially as people are added to groups.
For example, if you have 2 people, you have 1 possible grouping. If you have 3, you have 4 possible groupings (3 different groups of 2 and one group of 3). If you have 4, you have 11 (6 groups of 2, 4 groups of 3, 1 group of 4). Etc. You can see how rapidly the possibilities grow with each additional group member.
One of the reasons she talked about this was to explain why single parent families can be so tiring for everyone - there’s less relief from people than is possible when you have larger groups. When you have a larger group, people can find greater distance from one another when it’s necessary and the chemistry can be much more highly varied. In the conventional 2-parent nuclear family with 2 kids there are 8 more possible groupings than with just one parent.
I think about that often, and have learned to be sensitive to the needs of each.
The fact is, each group has its own structures, systems, and signals of meaning. There are perspectives and thoughts unique to each group that must be cultivated and honored, and doing this for all of them is a feat of personal detachment and time management.
So, my kids have a little language that’s all their own. So do my wife and I. So does my wife and oldest son, and my wife and youngest son, and my wife and the two boys, etc etc etc. Each of the 11 has its own little culture and valuation structure. It’s like families within families. Or a bunch of little churches, each with their own sacred rituals, passwords, practices, and theological outlooks.
Understanding this as I do, when someone signals that they are finding meaning within a particular one of those groupings to which certain others don’t belong, I listen and respect that boundary as much as I can.
A couple days ago I went to my favorite nature preserve for an afternoon walk. I had my earbuds in, playing one of my favorite podcasts. You could actually even say that each individual is a social group, and will find meaning from many outside influences (books, podcasts, movies, games) - as I write this I realize that individuals have their personal rituals as well, and that I was preparing to enact one of mine. That would take a grouping of 4 up to 15 subgroups.
At any rate, I spotted my wife, Heidi, and youngest son, Arthur, on a walk in progress. It’s always fun to happen upon people you love off in the wild, in the world 🥰 And our nuclear family grouping is probably the most significant social bond that any the 4 of us have, so it sends an important signal to make contact, recognize, and celebrate it.
We met up, smiled, and delighted in one another.
Heidi said “Would you like to join us?”
I thought about it. I would have been happy to, because it would have added an unexpected but welcome space of family connection to my otherwise solitary and professionally-oriented day. But it also would have meant sacrificing the time I had anticipated spending in my own personal ritual that offers its own highly customized traveling pace and the satisfaction of progressing through an intentionally-curated queue of content. I noted the tension and prepared to make my choice.
Before I could, Arthur stepped in and said, “No, this is OUR walk,” which signaled that he had committed his expectations to inhabiting the space only he and Heidi know, speaking their language, sharing their structures of meaning, enacting the personal rituals of their secret and superlatively exclusive 2-member church.
Arthur’s agenda was strong and clear. And I knew it was important to him, without being insulting to me. This was fortuitous because it allowed me to fulfill my expectation of solitude, brisk pace of walk, and personal podcast progress.
The ideal tradeoff was clear, which rendered the decision an easy one. Decisions are harder when the tradeoffs are not so clear, and we are all presented with many such crossroads in our personal lives, civic obligations, and professionacareers.
We went our separate ways, each enacting our respective rituals in our respective sacred spaces.
And fortunately we were serendipitously offered a later meeting at the conclusion of our walk so that we could reinforce our family bond and say our goodbyes as we proceeded to the rest of the day. In this way, through this fortuitous ritualistic framing which bookended both of our respective walks, we were together, even in our separation. That’s the second photograph.
We humans are a social species. All of our behavior is group behavior, even when we don’t realize it. Each new grouping creates a new space in which we rehearse the rituals that we agree orient in the direction of the ultimate valuation that all of us seek. Sometimes this is simple and graceful. At other times it is complex and riven with conflict. But the basic impulse is the same. Therefore we have little religions with everyone else in our lives, and each grouping reflects this. It is often subtle, but it is always there.
Think about this the next time you discern some kind of tension or lack in your social groupings. It could be in your family, or in your team at work. It could be in your city government or civic organization. It could be in your circle of friends. It could be in your marriage.
All of these work according to the same principles, which are the principles that have animated and driven humans as long as we have been humans.
“No, this is OUR walk.”
Who is walking with you?