Go Deep or Go To Sleep

To Be Someone Else’s Best

by: Raymond Chang
article from relevantmagazine.com

I was presented with an interesting question recently: "If you could only tell your future kids one thing and one thing only, what would it be?"

Before I begin to answer this question I should explain that one of my primary desires is to advocate the primacy of intimate and vulnerable relationships. I believe that deep relationships are the answer to most of life's unanswered questions. I live by the motto “go deep or go to sleep,” because relationships without depth might as well be sleep.

Life is all about the people we know and know us. There is nothing more important than those who will mourn at our funerals and be a significant part of our weddings and be present all the rest of the days of our lives. If you really take some time to think about it, relationships make and break experiences; they enhance our lives and give us a reason to wake up in the morning. Relationships are what life was made for.

As I sat there thinking about the one thing that I would teach my children, I pondered a million and one thoughts and narrowed it down to one answer. If I could only teach my children one thing, I would tell them to "be someone else's best _____."

To be someone else's best means that everything you do is for the relationship. To strive to be someone else's best means that you care so much about them that you are always there to support them, to encourage them, to understand them and to experience life with them. To be someone’s best is to think about him or her daily in order to support their life, help them develop and give them something to chew on to grow. It means that you will go out of your way to sacrifice for them, to participate in the things that are meaningful to them, and to help them achieve their dreams. To be someone else's best is to be committed to be his or her support, aid growth and give comfort. To be someone’s best is to love them always and not judge them.

Think about the ways you can be someone else's best. If your aim is to be someone else's best, a transformation will take place in your life that will affect the way you see, treat and love those around you. This will be the catalyst towards an intimacy that you haven't experienced before and will continue to deepen your relationship. Along with also being vulnerable, you will find that the reward is an intimacy where trust prevails, and there is a mutual honoring, respect and love for each other.

One of the problems that I see today is that people don't have enough deep relationships. Some people have many "friends" or at least people they think are their friends, but often do not attain the highest level of friendship—that being intimate friendship. Many people do the bare minimum in terms of maintaining friendship, often times because they haven't experienced anything else and simply just don't know any better.

Intimacy is a scary thing. It forces us to trust our most fragile parts to someone we know is fallen; someone we know who has at least at one point, disappointed someone, failed someone or betrayed someone. Intimacy puts us in a place where rejection seems like it shouts at us—where fear often presents itself as the only emotion available, and where we show the parts of ourselves that we have a hard time not being shameful about on our own let alone with another person. Intimacy is a scary thing, but life without intimacy is life without meaning.

Be patient, lose your pride and ego, and move towards an intimacy that is worth more than all the treasures in the world.