The Dichotomy of Relationships

I have a friend named John.

We went for a run recently.

Here’s the thing, I thought we were going for a 1-2 mile run.

He didn’t tell me that. He just didn’t tell me anything. So I made an assumption. Dangerous, I know.

I’ve been focusing on weightlifting recently, which has included short runs several times a week to warm up.

Over the past 4 months, none of those runs have exceeded 1-mile.

So when John mentioned going on a run together, I assumed we’d run 1-2 miles around our neighborhood. 3-miles max. Easy, great.

Well, John shows up at my house as scheduled and we start off running down the road.

And we keep running. And running.

But, while we’re running, we also begin talking.

We talk about work. We talk about aspirations for the coming year. We talk about marriage.

And we keep running.

We talk about facing challenges. We talk about college football. We talk about reading.

And we keep running.

We talk about podcasts. We talk about public transportation in Atlanta, or the lack thereof.

Finally, we arrive back at my house.

As we walk down my driveway, sharp pain comes into focus. My Achilles tendon is on fire and my calves are cramping badly.

I look down to turn off my Apple watch’s workout tracker and realize that we had not run 1 mile.

Or 3 miles.

Not 4, 5, or 6 miles.

We had run 7.5 miles.

Now, if John had asked me to go on a 7.5-mile run, I still would have done it. I enjoy challenges and I get a sort of sadistic pleasure from pushing my limits.

It would have sucked though. I would have been thinking about being done the whole time, checking my Apple Watch every 30 seconds to see how much closer I was to the end of this torture session.

I’ll tell you what I would not have been thinking about…

Work, aspirations, and marriage.

Or challenges, college football, and marriage.

Or podcasts and Atlanta’s lack of public transportation.

And I wouldn’t have been present to listen and learn from what John had to share.

I think there’s a lesson here.

There is power in doing hard things with other people. Doing hard things with others brings a higher level of purpose and meaning to any difficult endeavor.

It’s in this space where enduring relationships are formed. Relationships forged challenging experience by challenging experience.

Think about those closest to you. I bet they also happen to be the people who you’ve shared life’s most difficult challenges with.

Hard classes. Sports teams. Navigating the loss of loved ones or lost dreams. Bad decisions and poor choices. Difficult conversations. Failures. Crises in confidence.

There is relational equity that must be earned in sharing hard things.

But the return on this relational endurance is lasting. Those shared moments become bricks that build the foundation of lasting friendships.

Friendships that become the common thread, and anchor point, of life’s future highs and future lows.

It’s the dichotomy of relationships, those moments when you most desire isolation are the moments you most need companionship.

So, who are the people you’re letting into the hard parts of your life? Both the challenges by choice and the challenges by chance.