The Art of Relationships

By Seth Schrank
Indiana University

As humans we are constantly involved in the art of making relationships. Being an art, there are "skills" that go along with it.

For me, I try to develop and base my relationships on the things I have learned up until now, "skills" from public school, Hebrew school, and now college. However, I think though the more valuable "skills" are those I learned outside of the classroom. Those are the real lessons that I carry with me today.

One of the main sources of lessons outside of the classroom while I was growing up was my parents. As kids, who would have thought that anything that our parents said would ever be worth anything? But now that I am living on my own, the lessons that I stored in the back of my head are coming back -- and they are actually useful.

One of those basic lessons is being nice to people. For the past two years I have lived in the residence halls at Indiana. Each year I was in a different residence hall, with new people to meet. The people who are sometimes overlooked in the residence halls are the ones who work at the center desk. I cannot even begin to describe the amount of help that they provided me, for no other reason than that (unlike many of the other students) I took the time to say hi, see how their day was going and tell them to have a good day. This whole process probably took me less then a minute, but on the few occasions that I needed help from them, they were more than willing to go those few extra feet.

Marrying within the faith...

Another lesson I learned from my parents was the strong “encouragement” to date and marry within the faith. This is something that I have taken on not only as a lesson from my parents, but also as a guiding force in my life. For the most part, my friends are all Jewish, so this is not an issue.

One day in high school, though, it became an issue. I was talking to one of the staff members at school, who is not Jewish, and the subject of inter-dating and inter-marriage came up. At that point the question was posed to me, “Why is it so important?”

The first answer that came to mind was, “Well, my parents said so.” That didn’t quite seem right. I realized that I wasn’t sure of any other reason why this was so important to me. It had always been a constant and that was that. There was no need to ponder it further. It just was. Well, there I stood, not having a legitimate answer. So I told him I wasn’t sure and I’d get back to him.

I went home and thought it through and realized that while my parents had instilled it in me, it was something that I had made a part of me. It was (and is) important to me because the fate of our people as a whole rests on us making decisions to stay Jewish. We are already plagued with having a lower birthrate than the rest of the American population. Why compound our challenge by losing those who can help our people grow stronger and more vibrant?

One other person from whom I have learned a lot from is my best friend. We met in USY and our relationship has grown and changed over the past four years. If she has taught me nothing else (which, trust me, she has), she has taught me that when someone becomes too complacent with a friend and forgets how special a friendship is, that friendship is destined for failure. I almost lost my best friend because I did that; don’t let it happen to you. Remember one of those great childhood lessons: “Treat others as you would like to be treated.” It will never fail you and you will end up keeping more friends.

As with any artist, as we mature and get older, we refine the skills we learned early on. If we all work to refine these “skills,” this world will be a better place with happier people.

[Posted 7/28/03]