The Illuminated Life® Workshop: Home > Workshop Sampler > Life Question 5

Life, according to a Jewish saying, is with people. There are times on our journey in life when we are very much alone, but usually others are not far away. Certain persons may be with us the entire journey or nearly so. Others join us and then depart. Some who have gone remain with us in spirit or influence, while some who live with us may seem distant. The persons who have the most important effects on us are called significant others.

Significant others influence our lives in many ways. We pattern ourselves after them, knowingly or unwittingly. They influence the assumptions that we make about other people and the way we interact with them. They influence the way we think about and value ourselves. Significant others may love us or hate us, or perhaps it is a bit of both. They may nurture, comfort, support, or control us. They may help us grow or keep us from growing. We influence them in return, and each of us probably is or has been a significant other for a number of persons.

Significant others loom so large in our lives that we may be unable to see them clearly. And our view of them may continually change. A psychiatrist told Nancy Friday, author of My Mother/My Self, "Like everyone else you keep changing your idea of your mother. One day she's good, kind, and loving. The next day, she's frightened, timid, and asexual. One day all you see is your anger. Right now you want to go into a period of seeing her as all good. Either way, it means you are still avoiding seeing her realistically."¹ And in the same connection, Mark Twain wrote, "When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished to see how much he had learned in seven years."

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