Relationships are co-evolutionary loops
Author: Henrik Karlsson
Source: https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/making-a-home-together
#essays #relationships
Summary
In a relationship, you're supposed to evolve together through a co-evolutionary loop as you are molded into the person that you are supposed to become
Note
This is part 3 of Looking for Alice. Part 2 was behind a paywall.
Takeaways
It is rare for people to come into themselves if no one is excited and curious about their core, their potential. We need someone who gives us space to unfold.
- Humans are, after all, social creatures. Without others who see the potential in them, they will just wither and cease to exist.
There is a corollary for relationships. Some relationships are hard, or even impossible, to change. As an individual, you grow—but your father won’t acknowledge that change or adapt to it, and the relationship gets stuck. Other relationships are fluid and open-ended, they grow to fit you better and better the more time you invest in them, like an old house where you rearrange the walls, doors, and furniture until the light falls just right.
We kept on iterating. Changing our environment and our relationship, learning, and changing things again.
- The author calls this view "mechanical", but I see it more as "scientific", as it employs the scientific method. Relationships, learning to live together, they can all be positive feedback loops in a way.
The best scientists aren’t those who are the most intelligent; they are the ones who tweak their theories further than others, in close contact with experimental reality.
- In theory then, you can also use the scientific method in having long-lasting relationships with the use of feedback loops. However, there needs to be consistency to completely do this without fail, and what are humans if not inconsistent beings?
In photos, they look like us, yes, but their interiorities! Their interiors only vaguely resemble ours.
- I often think a lot about this as I look back on old photos. The person I was the year before isn't the same person as I am now, and even the person I was yesterday is not the same person as I am today. Tomorrow, I'll try to be different again.