Building Relationships, Commitment, And Love - U Is For...

We continue our series on how to build interpersonal relationships, whether with family, coworkers, friends, or that special someone...

Commitment and love are important to all of us; they are worth fighting for; they are worth working for. You also should know that in spite of many promises there is no secret for success, no checklist of things to do, and just as importantly no checklist of things not to do. But we do have suggestions, now continuing with the letter U or V. The focus is on ubiquitous, unity, and vision.

U is for ubiquitous. Ubiquitous is a fancy word for being everywhere. This is quite a good quality, one that is particularly demanded of parents, especially those trying to juggle a paid job and family responsibilities. How can they do it? They are the ones who can tell you much better than I can. I do remember telling bedtime stories and trying to integrate them in my own mind into my projects of writing computer textbooks. There was this little computer who… Ubiquitous. In spite of this fifty-cent word nobody can be everywhere. For some people the key is to pass quickly and yet make their presence felt. Do it fast but do it well and go on to the next task. Learn to reuse previous work. Don’t start from zero on the Underwood project; recycle appropriate material from the Ubaldo project. Now if you do it clumsily, instead of being everywhere you may end up being nowhere. Is that nonbiquitous?

Computers have become ubiquitous.

U is for unity. In union there is strength. Do what you can to keep people on your side. It is pointless to focus on minor differences; while you can’t get away with papering these differences over don’t blow them out of proportion. Of course for many people unity is a clear, unambiguous concept; reread as accept my proposals. In their mind your role is to listen. No need to make any suggestions; that could break the unity. This is no good. Instead of my unity and your unity let’s work for our unity.

Unity art print by Monica Stewart.

V is for vision. Don’t just look at the immediate future; strive for the big picture. It is said that when the telephone was first invented a bigwig from the telegraph industry was very impressed. He said something like, Great, now our telegraph operators will be able to communicate with each other. Talk about vision. When your toddler starts ripping pages out of magazines you might see her becoming an editor. And when your teenager wrecks the car you might see him as a Hollywood stunt driver. Straighten him out before he ruins someone’s vision.