What defines a partner?
Sophistication, brands and titles are the norms of these days. Technology and availably has been slowly redefining ‘simplicity’ as a quality too feeble and underdeveloped. Choice is what we have a lot these days and everyone wants the best. Perhaps this is what is leading the cohorts of the 1990’s and above to see life as the platform for race where they need to perform to win it, not live it, and to win we need to be and be with the best.
“What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.”*
This trend towards life is a race didn’t come into existence in a flash. As time began to pass workaholics began integrating work with family time, fetching higher outputs within the same limited business days. This started becoming the new normal and the definition of success. This phenomenon was well scripted by William H Davies in his famous 1911 poem ‘Leisure’*.
Today having the best is not only limited to products around us, career we in or quality of life we believe we are living it. We expect the same even from our partners. I will take a step back when I state the above. Not all do this, but many do! When we get serious about choosing our partners, we see how successful they are by their associated brands, where they work, their lifestyle and their intelligence. The threshold for compromise on either of the above is very negligible, as there is another for sure out there who will score better where the previous faltered. Looks, status, brands and intelligence mark the first cut on the pool of available prospects. We are running for that bee in the bush leaving the one in our hands. We want our partners to help us succeed when we feel it hard, to take wise decisions in matters of family affairs, be presentable to the world with credentials as sign of status, talk politics and current affairs ending up relating money and intelligence as the sure sign of a successful and understanding partner.
Find the person to laugh, talk and banter with. We say this when we look around for prospects but rarely do so. Career was never supposed to pass through the doors of a home. Like religious institutions are places for peace and faith, home is for laughter and joy. Fun fact, neither laughter nor joy is proportional to intelligence and brands. Most victorious people of career are serious in nature, and most serious people lack the needed smile of joy. Somewhere in the road of life we forgot to see the parallel highway of life adjacent to the highway of career we are running on. Money and status were never joy, and career gives that. Did we plan to write a thesis paper with our partners when we were at home? Or perform some ramp walk? After all, there is never a limit to finding the best the way there isn’t to greed.
Life could feel filmy again, where there is love in the air and happiness in our minds. That subtle smile on our lips and the ocean of content in our heart. Again, find the person to laugh and talk with and not just measure them on their career and intelligence. For the world we live in all that’s needed is joy inside our homes. Children are supposed to play on green grass the same way our better half is supposed to touch our soul. I believe what we need is to search for the person with the original definition of the word simplicity and not status.
“No time to wait, till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.
A poor life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.”*
* ’Leisure’ by William H Davies, 1911
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