Yuck to Shallow Relationships
Deb Owen learned of my posting on shallow relationships from mutual friend Gautam Ghosh. She acknowledged that she had some problems with the concept, as I suspect many readers did. Her thoughtful posting can be found here.
Because my response helped clarify my own thinking, here it is.
Deb:
Your comments on my posting about shallow relationships paralleled my own thinking as I learned how to network. Two additional thoughts have helped me network for personal benefit and retain piece of mind.
First, we make choices. We can use people for their help or we can go out and help people whom we think are honorable and with whom there is that necessary click with the sole expectation that we do the best we can for others and know most of them will do the same from us. Doing the best we can includes helping them when they hit a bad patch, even when we know they are unlikely to be in a position to help us ever again. That is our choice.
Second “deep vs. shallow” is a false dichotomy, which we are tricked into by the language and our own, dare I say, shallow thinking. Relationships operate on many dimensions. The Mexican laborer, today probably pushing 80, who has come to help my now 93 year old mother for the past quarter century, I know to be decent, honest, kind, hard working and loyal. We do not have a deep relationship, but it would be a lie to call it shallow. I have profound respect for this man and would trust him without hesitation in ways I would not many people I know better. I do not know a word to describe our relationship, which cannot be called deep or shallow.
We must not let common usage trick us into thinking that relationships can be measured on a single line running from deep to shallow.
Sincerely,
Ford Harding