What I've Been ...

 Listening To:

The other day I was listening to a podcast by Brené Brown and Adam Grant in which they classified platonic relationships into four categories:

·       Associates – those we have transactional relationships with, such as a mom’s carpool

·       Allies – those who share our values, be it social or justice, and whom we communicate with occasionally, but don’t hang out with

·       Pals – those we hang out with to have fun, but don’t get into deep conversations with

·       Companions – those we have deeper relationships with, have deeper conversations, those who would be there for us in hard times and vice versa.

I am paraphrasing their explanation of the categories, but I think it makes so much sense. We tend to lump all our platonic relationships into “friends”, and then we are disappointed when our idea of friendship doesn’t match theirs or what the relationship actually is. Further problems can arise when we try to force a “pal” into being a “companion.” Or, someone whom we consider an associate, thinks we are their companion, and tries to integrate themselves into our lives as such.

I wrote recently in my Seasoned Voices collaborative blog post about friendships, and I wish I’d heard this podcast prior to that. It’s okay to have a good time and laughs with pals and then walk away for weeks, or months, without contact. It doesn’t diminish the time you spent together; it doesn’t diminish the relationship. Even if we’re in a checkout line, or on an airplane, and we have a wonderful few minutes of interaction with a stranger, then never see them again, never follow up, that conversation enriched our lives for a few minutes, and that’s okay.

Not every heart-to-heart needs to blossom into companionship.

I’ve been thinking of my friendships since that podcast and how I would slot them into the categories. I can’t say I’ve come up with any associates, but I can see how people I know could comfortably fit into the other spots.

Is it detached and clinical to try and sort out your relationships that way? I think we put so much pressure on friendships by expecting them to conform to our definition of friendship that sometimes we lose sight of the fact that they’re fine the way they are.

 

Watching:

I watched the EAST OF EDEN series on Netflix and loved it. I’m ashamed to admit I’ve never read the book, so I don’t know how it compares. The story of course has biblical associations: the brothers Cain and Abel, good versus evil etc.

In the series, brothers Charles and Adam feud but love each other, and this dynamic is carried through to Adam’s sons, Cal and Aron. So many C’s and A’s, including Adam’s awful wife, Cathy, who is pure evil, but there’s an attempt to justify some of her actions through veiled references to something that happened to her as a child.

But the star of the show, for me, was Lee, their educated and wise manservant, who loved them as if they were his own family. He hid his education and reverted to pidgin English when he felt others expected it of him, perceiving him as no more than a Chinese servant.

 

The series shows the lasting effects of familial dysfunction through the generations, unless a conscious effort is made to break the cycle. We see what we want to see, we hear what we want to hear, we carry our unconscious biases within us, unless we are brave enough to examine them. That is what I got from the show, but my interpretations may have been overly simplistic.

Reading:

I finally got around to reading this strange (in a good way) little book that was recently nominated for the Giller Prize. I’ve followed Ghadery for a while but had not read one of her books. She’s well-known on the Canadian literary scene, an out-of-the-box thinker and poet and it shows in her work.

    The Unravelling of Ou - Hollay Ghadery

An unusual, quirky little novel from the POV of a sock puppet.

It’s such an original and poignant telling of Minoo’s story as told by Ecology Paul, the sock puppet who was “created specifically to give voice to the things Minoo could not.”

We learn about Minoo, her teen pregnancy and being sent away from Iran to Canada; her struggle to come to terms with her femininity and sexuality; her angst over motherhood; her shame…

“Minoo was never so ashamed of who she was until she saw herself through the eyes of her mother.”

Tender and touching, it tackles heavy topics with whimsy and beautiful prose that had me reading sentences twice.