This blog has suffered some serious neglect, reader. This is partially due to the wedding process, which has replaced my blog writing time with trying to convince DJs not to play "Let's get ready to rumble" as our reception entrance song and contemplating throwing the Macy's reception gun into a display of Stuben glass because you can't decide which brand of mixing bowl you want. I haven't been completely slacking, though. Part of this time was spent inching my way through the book "How to Create a Magical Relationship" by Ariel and Shya Kane.
Now, you may think this sounds like a corny self-help book, written by two people with total hippy names. And you would be right. This book was really more of an advertisement for the couple's weekend relationship seminars, and less of an actual guide for healthy relationship. This humorless couple spends 300 pages patting themselves on the back and taking things too seriously (there's even a part where they borderline freak out about the phrase "better half." Let's take a joke, shall we, hippies?) Basically, the theme of the book is "We are awesome. You'll never be as awesome as us, but pay $300 for our seminars and you can certainly try."
What should I have expected? The book has the word "magic" in the title. I should've prepared for some fluffy, rainbow BS. Still, there has to be something good to extract from this reading experience. One of the things that I actually did take from the book was that most fights between people come from a person's innate need to be right. The Kane's propose that the need to be "right" keeps us from being "alive." Stay with me, skeptics. Have you ever had a fight with your partner, where you said "Oranges are the best fruit!" and your partner has said, "Well, I've always loved blueberries, but now that you mention it, I agree with you. Oranges are the best fruit, and I apologize for thinking otherwise." No? That's because that interaction doesn't exist. What really happens is you say "Oranges are the best fruit!" Your partner says "Blueberries are the best fruit, and you never listen to my opinion." Then, you say "Never listen to your opinion! Are you kidding me?" And World War III has begun.
How do we get over this obsession with being right? Growing up, I had a Tapanga Laurence-type pension for always being the one to raise my hand in class. It made me SUPER popular in junior high, I'll tell you that. How do we let go, especially in the heat of the moment, when you know you are SO right and the other person is SO wrong? Most of the self-help books have said that if you want good relationships, you cannot concentrate on changing other people, but on changing your reaction to them. They suggest saying to yourself "What did I do to contribute to the problem?" This is difficult, because at least my gut reaction in the heat of the moment is "Nothing! I am the queen of everything and you are all pawns!" But if you really search for it, you can probably talk yourself down from your anger and into better state, where you can accept the fact that you don't need to convince someone else that you're right.
So, that's what I took from this one. I can tell you though, my next self-help book won't sound like a text book from Hogwarts.
"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way it does not exist," Friedrich Nietzsche.
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