Emotionally Distant

In a relationship, the physical location of your partner doesn't matter as much as how close you are, from an emotional perspective, with that person. Being emotionally distant is worse than being physically distant. The emotional distance can be such that those involve may start living separate lives even while living under the same roof.

It has been said that time heals all wounds but feeling emotionally distant is like the wound getting re-opened and made worse over time. If no action is done by either party to close that gap then time will make things worse - not better. It's a vicious cycle that's difficult to break.

If you are in an emotionally distant relationship remember this:

"The grass is greener where you fertilize it." -Lana Hamilton

This isn't the time for you to be thinking about getting off the ship. If you don't know how to close that gap it will happen again in your future relationships. Now is the time for you to be looking for help - the following are suggested avenues to consider:

• Couple Counseling - Couple counseling may help you identify the problem as well as develop a plan tailored for you and your partner to work on. This, obviously, requires your partner to be "on board" with the idea as well.
• Books - For some, counseling is out of the question but another good way to get ideas on how to fix problems in our lives is via books. "The 5 love languages" and "Love & Respects" are good books to help give idea on how to heal relationships.
• Far away Vacation - Being in an entirely new environment will force you to communicate to your partner in order to get around places. The forced teamwork may, in some cases, help renew the love. It is also possible to participate in "couple's retreat" type of vacation that are specifically tailored to help couples.
• Share with A Friend - Share your problems with a friend that you know will help you fix the current relationship and not entice you to end it. What is good to have is a different perspective of the issue and some friends are good at giving you those while others will just tell you to "call it quits". While it's true that there are plenty of fish in the sea it's not necessarily the time for you to start fishing again.

Remember that changing partners will only fix the problem momentarily. It's important to identify, and attempt to resolve the issue, in your current relationship so that it doesn't happen again in the future. If you're able to figure it out you'll feel closer to your partner like never before. Good luck!

Society in 3 Phases

Biologically, there are 4 phases we go through each with their own unique set of changes. You start off as a baby, then you become a kid, teen and finally you're an adult.
From a society's perspective, most of us goes through 3 phases throughout our lifespan. The name of each phases are descriptive enough that we can all kind of understand what they entails. The phases are:

• The learning Phase: Everything about this phase screams "learning". The child is born and he his taught by his parents, teachers, mentors and work associates. This is when we learn the most about living on this Earth and our place within society. It is my personal opinion that this phase should last a lifetime but the reality is that people often decide to stop learning after this phase is over. This phase usually ends at the age of 30 years old.
• The Doing Phase: Now that we know who we are and how we'll contribute to society it's time for us to "do" what we've learned in the previous phase. At this point, we're well into a career and we likely own a house with a family. This is also the time for us to be thinking about our future phase as well as the future of our own children. This phase generally goes from the age of 30 to 60.
• The Retiring Phase: This is the time for us to sit on the bench and let other players jump into the field of life and make a living of their own.

It's obviously not a cut and dry process. Some learn for longer through career changes while others skip the doing phase entirely... generally speaking, these are all the things that we're expected to do during our lifetime as a productive member of society. I think that by visualizing our lives in those 3 phases it helps us understand the bigger picture and plan accordingly.

Talent and Practice

Natural Talent or Practice? Which one is needed the most to succeed? The short answer is that we need a little bit of one and a lot of the other.

Natural talent is practically what you're stuck with as far as body/mind goes. It's what you were born with - it's all about your genetics. It plays a part especially in sports. If you were born with no legs, for example, then chances are that you won't make it in the NHL no matter how hard you tried.
Once you have the minimum required natural talent, then you need to practice. If you were 7 feet tall, for example, and couldn't dribble the ball then you wouldn't make it in the NBA.

I used to believe that everything in life could be achieved with hard work but now I understand that working hard can only go so far. In anything that you endeavor, you need a minimum of natural born strengths in order to reach the top of the field. If you're not a people's person then you'll likely won't make it in business unless you change that about yourself.
Unlike sports where height/weight/body parts matters, you could still succeed in business by learning the necessary skills but it won't be as easy for you as it would with someone that has the right skills from the start.

Figure out what you want to do with your life and then ask yourself if you have what it takes to achieve it. Do you need to be taller? Then you need to pass and move on to the next goal that you have.

The Universe Has No Purpose

We once believed that the Earth was at the centre of the universe and everything else revolved around it.
Once our eyes were opened to the fact that the Earth is but a pebble around a star among so many other stars, some of us adapted their beliefs to say that the Universe was created to satisfy our curiosity and effectively put themselves at the centre of it all once again.

Do we seriously believe that the fate of humanity is somehow tied to the Universe? That the Universe was created for us and that once our time has come to pass that the Universe will also cease to exist?
Isn’t it more likely that the Universe just “is” and we just happen to have developed an awareness to it. Isn’t it more likely that the fate of humanity has no bearing on the Universe’s Health?

Just because we know a handful of things doesn’t mean that we’re at the centre of anything. We pride ourselves for being creatures with intellect and yet we’re blind to our own arrogance in regards to our place in this Universe.
The fact that we’ve developed mastery towards our immediate environment doesn’t necessarily mean that it was placed there for us to play with.