Where and with whom you spend your time with influences what type of person you become. I wanted to interpret this chapter from two perspectives. The first I wanted to look at is one around network and associates that we identify as friends or acquaintances. I am sure you heard this saying many times show me your closes friends and I will show you your future. I am paraphrasing of course but the saying usually goes something along that line. Those words do ring truth because simply put we have 24hrs in a day. In those 24hrs, the area our energy is most concentrated dictates and direct the flow of our life. 

Certain interactions ask for high energy input of us, naturally we become invested into that world. Now, if that world is not conducive to growth, then you will eventually find yourself spiralling or venturing into unmanageable spaces. We reinforce our interaction with our networks through habits and routine that we have in common. We are creatures that love habits. Where both parties get to areas where we are afraid to break that routine because it serves comfort and familiarity may raise concern where it’s not allowing for growth. It’s okay to have familiarity and things in common but it’s also important to allow our network to have room to develop to something more. If it’s not growing us, then most often it going to lead us into state of dystrophy.

Let us look at the second association which is closer to home. What I mean by that is it relates to family and relatives. Raised in a communal based society, I have noticed we often time become more tolerant to growth stunting behaviours from people closes to us. Simply because we may associate not speaking up for improper behaviours, as showing disrespect to our relatives or family members. Rather than me speak about this in hypothetical, I am going to share an example. There is a family gathering where relatives from different areas come under one roof, for whatever reason. Still a bit hypothetical I know but I am sure you can paint a picture of such gathering in a way that relates to you. Let us say in that gathering you have mixture of people of all ages, so both grownups and younger audience are present.

Due to the varied age range, means the room have different emotional capability and understanding… Sounds like normal life stuff so far, right?    So why are we often reluctant to say no to improper behaviours in such situations? Mingling and catch-up where you have people mentioning subject matters about another family member or individual. Speaking harshly outside of their presence or bringing gossips about their lifestyle. Grown-ups consider it ‘normal’ to have grown up conversation, often time without gauging whether it should be raised in that specific room. I really do not have a concrete response for this situation, as some use this approach as building block for relationship. I mainly brought it up to make you aware that sometime others bring subject into your space that you should probably not tolerate. So, one needs to choose what they feel comfortable with and willing to tolerate in the household. These are possible steps you could use to gauge a room of any subject raised. Begin by asking yourself, would these things that I am saying or doing be okay if I was to say it or do it in front of the person in subject? If not, I keep it out of circulation. If the subject was brought up by another person and much of the room feel that’s okay, be okay to discretely excuse yourself. Such subject may have the adrenaline running but its long-term effect is an inevitable breakdown in relationship with the larger family. Family is familiarity but familiarity should not be a space for tolerating disrespect.

The main reason why I brought this up is not because of the person being spoken about but we sometimes fail to consider that people in that room may be feeling uncomfortable with the situation and because of the ‘respect’ or fear that they are not made subject matter in future conversation they don’t speak up. We must understand sometimes the conversations we are having affect a much younger audience in our presence. Members that may be in the room and we are unaware they are hearing what is being said. They pick up on those queues and grow thinking such behaviours should be tolerated. I focused a lot of this chapter around what we say but there are certain behaviours that we also must ask ourselves in which situation we should display them. Amplify each significant action or decision by a factor of ten, is its affect tolerable to you? Will you be okay if someone did that said that to you? Would you be okay if someone said it about you in front of millions? Asking questions about our choices is usually an effective way to set foundation for our values because it helps us paint the kind of world that we want to share with one another. Each one of our decisions are constantly brushing marks on the canvas of life.