Re-wilding your relationships

It can be tempting to try to devise, measure or steer a relationship to our will. The healthiest and most nurturing relationships have at the heart of them a respect for freedom and autonomy of the heart. They do not thrive on duty alone, on obligation or fear - they are formed between choice, consistency and organic maturation over time.

Like some gardens we may approach our relationships - romantic, familial or platonic - as something to be contoured, pruned or tailored to our design. Yet, the most dynamic and rich green spaces come from allowing things to grow wild.

When we tend to our relationships with care and consideration, but also with a spirit of acceptance and variety, we might truly cultivate lush, dense and diverse eco-systems that choose one another; not because one is shaped, curved or etched as one might wish, but because all are entirely imperfect and wild. Thus, acceptance must be at the heart of all good and healthy relationships.

The best relationships make space for seasons, for error and for change. If we cultivate their wildness, their unruliness and unkemptness we might protect something richer - filled with vitality and buoyancy - over what can be superficial, societal and duty-filled dynamics.

By allowing relationships to grow wild - without force or performance - but with care, consistency and acceptance; we might enrich and protect a deep-seated sense of ease and freedom that is so essential to the best and happiest of relations. In such as way, we might uphold authenticity and truth in how we relate to one another, as a whole: and as an entirely interrelated, dynamic eco-system.