An Onion as a Model for Life
- This article is part of the SM-201 Life's Lessons Project
Life is like an onion. Now, this onion may bring tears to your eyes. It may make you laugh, or just make you think.
Recently, I attended a meeting with a mental health professional. The concept of describing a logical and/or mathematical model for describing my friends and my life was brought up.
I explained that I use a model similar to an onion. There are 10 rings in the onion. My closest and most reliable friends are in ring one, or maybe in ring two. Very casual acquaintances live in ten-ring. The "rights and privileges" of each of the rings have been established. Some people in ring two and I spend a lot of time together, and they are given free access to almost everything I own. I have no one in the one-ring one right now.
In a way, my onion model is the same. Ring 10 contains people that I seldom hear from, or they are business associates. As you move to an inner ring, you get more freedom and access.
If you can imagine the surface area of each of the rings in an onion, you can see that the actual surface area grows pretty quickly as you go from ring one to ring ten. Also, the volume of each onion ring grows geometrically. Now imagine that the total amount of time, interest, effort, etc (one hundred percent) and the amount of that resource is now given to the whole onion. The whole is now divided proportionately amongst each of the ten rings. The problem here is that as you move from ring one to ten-ring, the number of residents is significantly larger, meaning that ten percent per ring is now shared with a much larger group of people.
So it could be said there are people with whom I would shake hands, while others must live with a polite wave, others get nada! Others, I will kiss their hand, on their lips, or in passion. Some I would allow to see me in my underwear, some might see me nude, with some I might engage in heated foreplay, but a very few would I get involved sexually.
The same is true with my people levels. Some are banned from my home, others may enter, while some have a key. Some may enter my bedroom, some may lay on my bed, but a very, very few sleep with me.
There is an old joke that says, "a good friend will help you move, but a really good friend will help you move a body".
Who makes the decision which ring you are in? You do! If you make nice with me, you get moved to a smaller ring. Make me angry, and guess what !?!
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