Landon
The big question is, this is one that's taken for granted all the time. What are relationships for? What are they for anyhow?
Have you ever asked that question? The most important questions in the world somehow never get asked. We just assume, well, we know what they're for, do you?
Announcer
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Heartbeat, the podcast, featuring the insight and teaching of Landon Saunders. On today's episode, we return to the community workshop, Feeling Good About Yourself, where Landon has just introduced the topic for the next few minutes, How do we feel good about our relationships? Or what are relationships for?
Landon
I suspect that there are several people in this audience who's never asked the question to start with. You think you know the answer. and you have some sort of an answer that you'd give and your answer is wrong. And that's one of the problems with your relationships. We're just getting, you know, I can say anything I want to say because this is free. Now, we're asking now, what is this, what are these relationships for anyhow? Are they for your ownership?
Are relationships for ownership? When you marry, do you own your husband? Do you own your wife? When you have children, do you own your sons and your daughters? Do you behave toward them like they're your property?
Does one human being ever own another human being? When you get a good friendship, do you think you own that friendship, that person? Now we're going to get even more ticklish. Do you think you own the people who work for you? We could have talked all night without saying that.
Do you think you own these people? Do you think relationships are for your use? You say, well, I'm in, son, where they believe that. That you just use them? You use them for whatever you want to use them for? You use them for your benefit? You use them for your desires?
Are we creating all these relationships for our own personal use?
What are relationships for? Now I'll tell you what I think they're for. I think relationships are basically for your joy.
That's what they're for.
Relationships are for joy.
That's way down there...and it helps with our loneliness, I know all of that.
I think that's a good point out of it. Now if you do, it's a wonderful thing, isn't it? You'd probably pull out the word blessing to describe that. But so often that's not what we get. And it may be that I am coming at my... I'm lonely. Now it's up to you to take that away. I'm depressed. I'm depending on you to help me get over depression. I have sexual drives. I'm depending on you to fulfill those drives. I want children so I'm depending on you to sort of do that and on and on it goes. Are relationships for that? All those things are involved. Or are relationships for joy?
Pure, unmitigated joy. Now, we've used the expression here already tonight. We need to work on the relationships. And the word work gets into relationships. What if we substituted or replace the word work, which hasn't worked very well, with play? If relationships are for joy, maybe relationships are also for play.
Instead of working on your relationship, what if you played at your relationships? It'd sure be more fun, wouldn't it?
Not so much for work, but for play. That relationships are made for enjoyment. They are made for delight.
Announcer
Landon will be right back. But we want to invite you to visit thisishartbeat .com where you can sign up to receive the joyful jumpstart email in your inbox every few days. Now back to Landon.
Landon
In my own father's case, My own father was not blessed with a lot of education. He was not blessed with a lot of training. Never went to a parenting class in his life. There were times when I might have wished he had. There was a lot, I mean, he grew up without so many advantages. His own father was one of the most difficult men that I ever met.
I was scared to death of my grandfather and learned that he literally chased two of his sons with a pitchfork once. Now whether he would have used it or not I don't know but they certainly ran like they thought he would. And though I loved him but I never ever understood that man and so my father didn't have a great role model.
But you know what my father did? He played with us. And he found a way to make sometimes the most difficult things playful. We worked. He believed in work. He believed in the value of work and we worked very hard. But I will have to say that my dad must have gotten up earlier in the morning to find ways to turn that work into play. I could tell you the stories for an hour of little situations, hard menial tasks, that he somehow was finding ways to bring the delight and to bring the laughter. I think without playfulness, my childhood and growing up would have been vastly different.
Now, is that just something that's peculiar to his personality? I don't think so. When he walked in, I remember they moved away from this little town where there were so many chemical plants in West Virginia, and they bought this little farm that was way out from town. I mean, you went out to the...blacktop and then you hit the gravel and you left the gravel and then you hit the dirt and you left the dirt and then you hit the creek and then you went up on the hill. We live so far out of town we had to go toward town to hunt. And out there in that situation one morning after we'd moved over there he had a good job, it was warm and well dressed, good paying job and about 10 o 'clock one morning he walked in the house and mother said, Robert, What are you doing here? Oh, he said.
She said, of course, you know, that's panic time. She said, you quit? He said, yes, I quit. And he said, you know, the kids are growing up and I wanna be with them more. I wanna be with them more. Well, what are you gonna do? Well, we're gonna cut the timber off this place first. And for the next few years.
We cut the timber. We had a little dairy. We had truck farming. We raised chickens. And then he became a builder and a good one. You say, well, but not everybody can do that. No, that's not my point. I'm not using that as a model. I'm only using it to sort of illustrate. We go at this thing that's called life sometimes. So hard.
So hard. So hard because somehow we get our own little vision of our life and our own wants and our own needs and then we just go driving down through life and the things that are most important of all. Sometimes, Hal, just get, just get, they strew our path.
What if I could just realize that relationships, that they're not made for work, they're made for play. Husbands and wives must play together. And they must know that as long as they're not hurting each other, it's all legitimate. That we play together and that our children, children do better when the parents know how to play with them.
Oh, I have such wonderful stories of these play times. My father broke his little toe once chasing us in the house. You say, well, maybe we should know more about your father. Well, not really. All I'm telling you is that there's a way to go at life that isn't so hard.
Take it easy. Let off a little bit. Ask and be certain that as we're moving along the way, on our way to whatever our goals may be, that when you have to sacrifice the things that you're going to regret the most in the last years of your life, that kind of living has a kind of insanity about it, doesn't it?
The plea tonight is for life. The plea tonight is for the life of the person you're in relationship with. The plea tonight is for your life. The plea tonight is for your children's life. It's for your friend's life. It's for the business's life. And the way we go about this life is to understand centrally what human life is about. And human life is about joyfulness. And human life is about joy...for joy and relationships are made for joyfulness. I knew a man who would, when he put his little daughters to bed at night, he would tell them stories. He would say, now, did we have any fun today? And they would say, well, dad, yes, we had some fun today. We did this and What about tomorrow? When he plays this little game with them? Do you think maybe we should try to have some fun tomorrow or maybe should we?
little girl's eyes were bright and they sometimes would sort of play along and they said, well, dad, maybe we could skip a day. And then very quickly, no, I really think we should go for fun again tomorrow.
Your life still has great capacity for joyfulness.
Announcer
Thanks once again for joining us for today's podcast. And we hope that this discussion of what relationships are really for has been encouraging to you. For additional resources for a life driven by this kind of joy, you're invited to visit ThisIsHeartbeat.com. And of course, we hope you'll join us next time for another visit to the Community Workshop where Landon continues the discussion about relationships.