In this post, I want to provide a path for you to see your partner as someone more wonderful than you’ve experienced before. I am using wonderful in all its strictest interpretations: excellent; great; marvelous; of a sort that causes or arouses wonder; amazing; astonishing.
For most of us, it’s difficult to imagine a partner of 20, 10, 5, even 2 years as “astonishing.” How can we be astonished and amazed by someone we’ve known for that long… unless our partner is Oprah, Bill Gates, Bono, Nelson Mandela, someone who is doing amazing things day in and day out?
What those celebrities have is realized potential. You and I and your partner have 99% the same DNA as everybody else. Every one of us has that same potential – not necessarily in the same areas, but just as much.
I have a nephew who has bone cancer. Now, before he had cancer, he was a terrific athlete – the kind that scores more than half the points of his entire team in virtually every sport. But he wasn’t what you would have thought of as a remarkable human being. He was a teenager, with all the annoying, self-centered, hormone-induced trimmings that come with teenagers.
It wasn’t until he got cancer that we were able to see how remarkable he truly is. The way he bucked up about having to have a prosthetic limb, ending his athletic endeavors. The way he took care of other stricken families at St. Jude’s. I could write endlessly on how he’s inspired people, but you’ve already heard this story, from people of all ages. Someone gets a serious malady and transforms into a super human being. Happens every day. You probably know more than one example personally.
My point is this. Your partner is an ordinary person and an extraordinary person. At some point, as is the drift, you’ve probably positioned him or her in some pigeon hole. What will it take before you recognize your partner as wonderful – to be filled with wonder in your partner’s presence? You could wait until he or she gets cancer. Or, you could be the environment in which your partner’s brilliance occurs. Your partner is already amazing. Being filled with wonder is up to you.
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
-George Santayana