The Seven Levels of Intimacy: The Art of Loving and the Joy of Being Loved (15 page)

The experts at carefree timelessness are, of course, teenagers. While they may use clichés to avoid intimacy with many of the adults in their lives, in relating to their friends in their peer group they have perfected the art of carefree timelessness.

What do teenagers do? They talk on the phone. How long do they talk on the phone for? Hours. Johnny has been on the phone for four hours and when he gets off the phone his father asks, “How long have you been on the phone?”

“Not long, “ Johnny replies.

“Who were you talking to?” his mother asks.

“Susan,” Johnny replies. Susan is Johnny’s girlfriend.

“What did you two talk about?” his father asks now.

And what does Johnny say?

“Nothing!”

Carefree timelessness!

When Johnny said, “Not long!” he wasn’t necessarily telling a lie. When he told his parents, “Nothing!” he wasn’t necessarily being evasive. The nature of carefree timelessness is to be timeless. You lose track of time. Carefree timelessness is carefree. It has nothing to achieve other than the enjoyment of each other’s company.

Teenagers are experts at it. How often do parents ask, when their children are going out with friends, “Where are you going?” The children reply, “I don’t know!” Of course, we consider this an unacceptable answer, but it may just be the truth.

Carefree timelessness. It is the reason young people fall in love so easily. The lack of carefree timelessness is the reason the rest of us fall out of love so easily. Carefree timelessness causes us to fall in love with life and others, and it will help you move your relationships beyond the first level of intimacy.

The question is: How do we go about it?

Whether you decide you need some carefree timelessness with your spouse, your boyfriend or girlfriend, your children or parents, or your friends and colleagues, there are a thousand ways to create it.

The first thing you need to do is schedule it. Now I hear that objection in the back of your mind. You are thinking, if I have to schedule it then it’s not carefree timelessness. Not so. Think back to our definition of carefree timelessness, as time spent together without an agenda. I didn’t say that it is unscheduled and will happen all on its own. We know it won’t. We have to schedule it, but we don’t need an agenda.

Let me give you an example of carefree timelessness. If you said to your wife, “Let’s plan to spend Friday afternoon together next week, and we will just decide what we want to do when it comes around.” That’s time together, with no agenda: carefree timelessness.

On the other hand, suppose you said to your wife, “Let’s plan to spend Friday afternoon together next week, and we can stop by the store and buy that new television, return those trousers you bought me that didn’t fit, have lunch, pick up the kids, and then come home and finish raking those leaves.” It is certainly time together, but it also sounds anything but carefree.

Do you need some carefree timelessness with your significant other?

There are a thousand ways to spend your carefree timelessness. Nobody needs help with that; you schedule the time together, and when the time arrives you simply turn to each other and ask, “What would you like to do?”

If you have the drive and discipline to make carefree timelessness a habit in your primary relationship, you will be stunned and amazed by how powerfully it changes your life together. Make it a habit.

Two hours once a week.

One whole day once a month.

A weekend getaway once a quarter.

Give it a try, then send me an e-mail in three months and tell me how much it has changed your relationship.

Our lives as individuals change when our habits change. It’s not freak luck that changes our lives, and God doesn’t have any favorites. Our relationships change when our habits as members of those relationships change. Make carefree timelessness a habit in your primary relationship. And as you begin to be convinced of its power, make it a habit in all of your high-level relationships.

I have powerful memories of carefree timelessness with both my mother and my father as I was growing up. I have seven brothers; and it would be easy to think that in that type of environment siblings just get lost in the crowd. Not so—at least, not in my family. Both my mother and my father went out of their way to make sure that we had the individual nurturing we needed to grow into confident young men. My visits to the Art Gallery of New South Wales with my mother were one example of this individual carefree timelessness my parents lavished upon my brothers and me. The gallery had an exceptional permanent collection and attracted world-class traveling exhibits. Renoir, Van Gogh, Monet, Picasso, Warhol, Matisse, Pollock, and many, many, others were introduced to me by my mother inside the walls of that gallery. It was there that I developed my fascination with great art and with the artists behind the masterpieces.

After we visited the gallery we would have lunch and talk, just me and my mother. It seemed natural and normal to confide in my mother my hopes and dreams, and to speak about the happenings of my life. We had carefree timelessness. My father was at home with my brothers. Today was my day. My brothers would each have their day in turn. As I think back on it I am not sure how often we had such days, perhaps only once a year, but they left a powerful impression upon me.

Do you need some carefree timelessness with your children?

Millions of people confine important relationships to the first level of intimacy. They communicate primarily in clichés because they often sense that nobody is really interested in them and that nobody cares. Studies show that on average a parent spends less than seventeen minutes in conversation with their teenage child each week. Is it any wonder that we have trouble understanding their world?

In a culture obsessed with the value of time, one of the real and tangible ways for us to let people know that we care, that we are interested in trying to know them, is to give them our time. Not grudgingly and stingily, but lavishly. Love is generous and abundant. By lavishing our time upon the people we love, we demonstrate that we love them, that we care about them, and that we are willing to make an effort to know and be known.

Carefree timelessness is the key to moving beyond the first level of intimacy, out of the impersonal world of clichés and into the world of personal conversation. In fact, the lesson of carefree timelessness plays a significant role in all seven levels of intimacy. Give the gift of carefree timelessness to your significant other, to your children, to your parents, to everyone with whom you have a high-level relationship. Give the people you love the gift of carefree timelessness. It will transform them, and you, and the relationships you share. Then and only then, restored once more by that carefree timelessness, together, will you discover the lightheartedness essential to the thriving we were given this life to enjoy.

All great things can only be achieved with a light heart. Lightheartedness is the fruit of carefree timelessness.

W
HO
’
S
T
HAT
H
IDING
B
EHIND THE
F
ACTS
?

T

If a relationship is confined to this second level of intimacy, we talk about the weather, sports, how the stock market is performing, and what we did today. These conversations tend to be in staccato form. The questions and the answers are normally very brief, usually just a series of one-liners. We simply ask:

“How was your day?”

“Fine!”

“What did you do?”

“I went to work. At lunchtime I went to see Dr. Jones about my knee. I saw Mrs. Miller at the bank and stopped by to see Grandma. Did you know her cat has run away?”

The first question and answer (“How was your day?” “Fine!”) was on the cliché level and was used to initiate a conversation. This is the proper use of the first level of intimacy. The second question (“What did you do?”) could have met with a clichéd answer, “Same old stuff,” which would have shut down the conversation. Perhaps not immediately, but most people will only ask so many questions, and receive so many clichéd answers, before they give up their hope of a conversation. It is in this way that we so often use clichés to stonewall intimacy. But in the example at hand, the speaker leads into the second level of intimacy by replying to the question (“What did you do?”) with a litany of facts. The facts were impersonal, but this conversation did progress beyond the mere exchange of clichés and into the second level of intimacy.

It is also important to note that this reply ends with a question (“Did you know her cat has run away?”), opening the opportunity for further discussion. Nonetheless, this conversation is simply a recitation of impersonal facts and observations.

The facts would have been personal if she had said,

“I went to work, and I am really excited about this new project I am working on.” This is no longer just a statement of impersonal fact, as it reveals how she feels about work.

“At lunchtime I went to see Dr. Jones about my knee. She keeps telling me it’s healing. But it’s been six months, and I don’t know if she knows what she’s talking about.” This statement moves beyond the facts, revealing something about the speaker through her opinion.

“I saw Mrs. Miller at the bank; we only need twelve hundred dollars now before we can take that cruise.” This tells you something about the speaker’s hopes and dreams.

“And did I tell you I saw Grandma? She is distraught because her cat ran away. She was so sad and I felt so helpless.” This goes far beyond mere facts, telling you that the speaker is concerned about others and is capable of being empathetic.

The second level of intimacy (facts), like its predecessor (clichés), is very useful in forming an initial acquaintance with a person, but if we remain in the level of nonpersonal facts for too long, the relationship becomes stale. After a while, the recital of impersonal facts becomes boring and monotonous, and all great relationships are dynamic collaborations. Far from being boring and monotonous, they are creative and exciting.

We all have relationships in which we communicate exclusively with impersonal facts. Your relationship with a financial adviser may be strictly professional, confined to the pleasantries and facts of the first two levels of intimacy. In some relationships that is appropriate, but in our high-level relationships that is deeply inappropriate. Are any of your high-level relationships being held hostage by impersonal facts?

O
UR
N
ATURAL
C
URIOSITY AND
L
OVE OF
L
EARNING

O

Suppose you are at a dinner party and everyone is talking about someone who is having an affair. It seems self-evident that this conversation (whether the affair is fact or fiction) is unlikely to help anyone become the-best-version-of-himself or herself. We may respond to this conversation by renewing our internal commitment to be faithful to our partner, but that would be making the best of a bad situation.

On the other hand, suppose you are at a dinner party and someone is talking about a trip he took to Paris, his visit to the Picasso Museum, and a book he has been reading about Picasso’s life. It is possible that even though the conversation involves nothing more than the exchange of facts, it would be helping you to become the-best-version-of-yourself. How? The content in itself is more intellectually stimulating. But, more important, if you were to embark on a discussion of Picasso’s life and his personal struggle to overcome his inner conflicts, you would move the conversation up another level.

Every conversation can move you closer to the-best-version-of-yourself or lead you away from your essential purpose. We therefore have an enormous responsibility every time we engage in a conversation with anyone. Before we open our mouths, we should ask ourselves: Is what I am about to say going to help this person (or these people) become the-best-version-of-himself or herself?

One of the great virtues of the second level of intimacy is that it has the potential to ignite our love of learning. For many of us, the love of learning is trained out of us when we are very young. We tend to associate learning with schools, assignments, exams, and report cards. Textbooks, overburdened with a myriad facts that seem irrelevant to our lives, create a negative perception regarding books in general. We go to school, take our exams, and receive graduation certificates, but few are really ignited with a genuine love of learning. Cramming for exams destroys the natural human curiosity so evident in young children, who ask a million questions and meet every answer with “Why?” The human mind is naturally curious, wants to grow and expand, but too often our modern educational systems rob us of this natural love of learning in their quest to graduate us.

Conversations will very often go where we choose to take them. The conversations that take place on the second level of intimacy are an opportunity to reawaken our natural yearning for knowledge and to reengage the curiosity that may have been asleep in you since shortly after you began structured education. Your mind delights in learning new things. Feed your mind. Your mind needs a diet, just as your body needs a diet: not a diet that deprives you, but one that fuels you.

Most people are in possession of rare facts and insights into certain topics; we have to learn to engage them in a discussion about these topics. As we venture through the remaining five levels of intimacy, we are going to learn how to engage people in conversations about the things they are passionate about and the topics they possess expertise in. This will empower us to transform almost any conversation from a mundane and boring exchange of facts into a fascinating and intellectually stimulating discussion.

We move from the second to the third level of intimacy in two steps. The first step is to move from lower-level impersonal facts to higher-level impersonal facts. Lower-level impersonal facts concern current events, the weather, and the results of the market. Conversations concerned with higher-level impersonal facts might include a discussion of the life of Abraham Lincoln or Mahatma Gandhi, what causes a tsunami to occur, or the reasons Google continues to confound stock analysts. This is the first step, from lower level to higher-level impersonal facts. In the second step, we move from impersonal to personal facts; this is the bridge that takes us into the third level of intimacy. We will discuss it shortly, but first a look at the power of speech and how we use (and abuse) this power in our everyday lives.

T
HE
P
OWER OF
S
PEECH

A

An experience like that certainly makes you think about your life. I was seriously scared again during a visit to Chicago a couple of years ago, when I lost my voice. I had spent the day visiting three high schools and had strained my vocal cords, but I was afraid I wouldn’t get my voice back. You see, I love to speak. I cannot imagine having this message within me and not being able to share it.

Imagine that you wake up tomorrow morning and can no longer speak. Imagine the inconvenience of the simplest tasks. Imagine how much more difficult it would be to relate to the people you love. Imagine how you would yearn to speak. Imagine how irritated you might be with people who waste their words, or refuse to speak their love even though they are able to.

Speech is one of the most powerful gifts the human person possesses, and like most of our gifts it can be used positively, to raise people up, or negatively, to pull people down. Words are either positively or negatively charged. Let’s take a look at some of the ways we use our power of speech every day.

C
ATCH
S
OMEONE
D
OING THE
R
IGHT
T
HING

R

Think back to a time when someone caught you doing something right. How did it make you feel? When was the last time you caught someone doing something right and praised that person for his or her efforts?

As we grow in emotional maturity, we realize that everyone needs encouragement. When we shower our praise upon others, we energize them. Whom will you energize with your praise today?

R
ASH
J
UDGMENT

A

How do you think I felt? How quickly we rush to judge people and situations. But we judge them from where we sit, from our situation, circumstances, and experience of life. And everything looks different depending on where you look at it from.

It is easy to get into the habit of judgment. Once we begin to judge people, things, and circumstances, judgment can rule our inner and outer dialogues. An inner dialogue (the mental conversation we are constantly having with ourselves) of judgment creates nothing but restlessness and discontent. An outer dialogue of judgment destroys honest and open communication, because none of us want to make ourselves vulnerable if we sense we will be shot down by judgment.

For the next twenty-four hours, try not to judge a single person or situation. Give people the benefit of the doubt. Try to see the situation from where they sit. Practice non-judgment. Non-judgment fosters open and honest communication and breeds intimacy. Judgment is death to intimacy.

Judgment is one of the great poisons that kill relationships. Begin each day with this affirmation: “Today I shall judge nothing that occurs.” When you do find yourself judging people, places, things, circumstances, gently repeat the simple mantra, “Today I shall judge nothing that occurs.”