Space and Relationships: The Final Frontier

Every time anyone mentions an idea, though unknowingly in many cases, we refer to the other side at the same time without even mentioning it out loud. If I say” look at that piece of art on the wall” I’m not just bringing attention to the paint on the canvas and its artistic uniqueness, I’m also in a much more subtle way suggesting you look at the actual canvas itself. The art itself is nothing without the blank canvas there for the art to be laid out on. This is the space that the art is operating within, and this is the vehicle the art is being delivered to you in.  Sci-fi is the best art/fiction to show the incredible importance of the background to the story as a whole. Nowhere else in story telling is the “space” more important than in Sci-Fi writing, space is literally the final frontier of true exploration.

Art like life is always better when the artist is changing and evolving as time goes by. If an artist is great at say guitar, and then later learns other instruments and adds that to the art it can make it much better. Some may not prefer the new style, but that’s what the artist is happy pursuing so who are you to judge do you play guitar? When you hear one bird sing it’s beautiful, when you hear two birds sing it harmonizes, but when the whole flock is chirping it is musical madness of the most wondrous nature. Certainly some things just go together and there’s no denying their connection in both our minds and in our environment, bees and flowers, colors and shapes, bears and honey, but some of the greatest truly unique moments happen when the un-common meet each other.

Even if we view relationships in a truly mechanical way we can see that when a machine of some sort is assembled it is individual very unique parts working together to make the whole of the mechanism work. If two parts were to be worked against each so much that they actually become one the entire machine breaks down. Parts of the assembly go together they don’t become together. The parts of the machine move around in a logical fashion coming closer and farther apart depending on the moment and current desired operation of the machine.

Ask anyone who is or has been married and usually when you talk to them about their life up to this point they will tell you they met their significant other and that’s when a lot of shit changed. That’s when the background of all things in your life changed. All future moments are set in the context of marriage. A lot of your other social arrangements change when you meet someone that becomes very important to you. Your relationships with your friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances, and even complete strangers are all laid out in a different fashion when that relationship is there.  Of course our lives are all about things changing as we age and become experienced with more and more memories.

We all define ourselves in many ways with the people we associate ourselves with. There’s no denying that others have an impact on the decisions we make and the way we live our lives. I’m certainly not suggesting that we’re not individual parts, but our totality is the true us. We are not you and me, it’s everything that’s alive or not that we deem significant that is the real totality of our existence. All these parts come together in motion to create our culture which is the social background of our lives.

This space and the backgrounds in our lives are very important and we need to allow our significant others there place to be and grow. By concerning ourselves too much with the “situation at hand” we’re denying our significant others their chance to grow. Often times when I listen to divorcees talk about their breakup they say “they just weren’t the person I married anymore”. Should people really be expected to be the same person after two, five, or even ten years? I’m changing like every fucking day; the other day I found Kevin Smith’s Smodcast and that alone changed my life forever. The other thought that stems from that is if they’re not the person they were when you married them then can’t we surmise that being married to you is part of what changed them? It’s a pretty big deal for most people to be married, so it is pretty safe to say that your life will be changed by marriage. Again in that same stream of thought are you not also confessing that you liked the unmarried version of that person better than the married version of that same person?

I’m not saying people shouldn’t be involved in deep long term relationships with each other. What I’m saying is you fell in love with that person when they were on their own doing their own thing. Things were fresh and stuff was changing for both of you in a good way. Now if you take that wonderful majestic wild create and throw it in a cage it doesn’t do all the cool stuff it used to do. You might argue that that means that they also don’t do all the bad things either, but ultimately you’re trying to fit a square peg into a circular hole.  We need space and other backgrounds in our lives to help us identify just how special that one relationship is so we can cherish it all the more. I’m never more happy to see my cat than after I was just at somebody’s house with a slobbery co-dependent dog. My cat says “meow” rubs up against my leg and then proceeds to mind its own fucking business. Likewise nothing makes me more appreciative of my loving, liberal, bi, hippy girlfriend than spending a day in Newport Beach surrounded by materialistic trophy wives.