Landmark Forum Leader Insights

Relationships—A matter of saying

By David Cunningham

We sometimes think about relationships from a particular framework or story—how we met, what happened, the good times, the bad times, what we did, what we learned, etc.—a story primarily shaped by past experiences.. Love and relationship, however, are a series of words—a matter of saying—a sacred saying, a stand we take for another rather than an internal state or series of events.

Being related, like happiness, isn’t about having some “thing” in mind because it is not some “thing” in the foreground; it’s a background conversation that creates the possibility of what’s in the foreground. Relationships are about discovering what’s possible in being human beyond the places where, unknowingly or knowingly, we might limit ourselves. Transformation doesn’t negate what has gone before it; rather, it fulfills it. Transformation reaches into our past and gives it dignity, which guides and shapes our future. Sacred sayings are those things that have no ground underneath them, but become the ground—an act of creativity.