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Reverberative Relationships
In previous entries, we have enhanced our state of being through mindful awareness; reviewed elements of clear and civil communication; listened in new, more intense ways, aware of the space around us; interrogated our identity markers to see what it is that triggers our incivilities to examine our prejudices and our response to Others, those unlike us — all with a civility mindset.

We have emphasized how the stories we carry of our life experiences underpin and permeate each of these activities. Our stories loom large.

As we turn to relationships, our personal stories once again resonate, and the knowledge we have gained and the behaviors we have interrogated help us realize resonant relationships.

We are born into relationships, the very first with our mother. Others immediately follow — father, if present, and other caregivers, including siblings, if any, and possibly grandparents and friends. As we age, and form new relationships, we carry the resonance of earlier ones in our being, and the memory of our relationships is always with us, accessible in significant moments. Primary relationships are most powerful, and, indeed, reverberate through our bodies and flash through our minds as new relationships develop and life proceeds.

We are social beings, and when we connect with others, the resonance of past relationships is there to be called on. We learn from the good and the bad, the challenged and the blessed, the failures and successes; it is from these that we realize our humanity.

We come from the mindful awareness of our bodyheartmindsoul in a state of presence; we listen anew; we carry a heightened sense of our own identity and what it means for interactions with Others; and we understand the complex IYouIt dynamics of civil communications, holding on to ethical, empathetic, and logical behaviors that are so important to civility.

The idea of civility is resonant in the caring we received in early relationships. Your mother, or other caregiver, was the one caring and you were the one cared for. This concept of one caring and one cared for was defined and developed by Nell Noddings (see bibliography). The concept provides a framework for understanding civility, which is also interpersonal and interactive, and usually reciprocal, if it is to be realized.

As in caring, how civil I can be is a function, to large extent, of how you respond to me; in other words, my act of civility must be completed in you in order for a civil relationships to be realized. The image of one hand clapping suggests the poignance of unfulfilled caring, or unrealized civility.

Caring, like civility, builds on the natural sympathy people have for one another. We can imagine a five-step relationship ladder that
  • begins as detached (with potential for civil association);
  • and moves through affiliative (work, social, community, or religious);
  • to empathic (recognizing emotions being experienced by another);
  • to compassionate (sympathetic pity and concern, especially for misfortune and suffering); and
  • culminates in consubstantiality (substantially with, fully identifying with another). See Kenneth Burke, bibliography.
The level of engrossment in relationships increases (Noddings again) as the following qualities blossom from detached to consubstantial: ability to relate, familiarity, tolerance, respect, emotionality, bodily involvement, willingness to listen, reciprocal give-and-take, receptivity and responsiveness, social cohesion, identification, harmony, sense of worth, and confirmation.

Wonderfully, this engrossment happens to both parties in the relationship, the caring and the cared for, as we are conceptualizing them here.

Relationship reverberations grow richer and more plentiful, thus making more possibilities for caring, and civility, imaginable.

Civility is realized.

Peace is possible.