Relational Thinking

You know, it's something that I've probably heard all my life growing up, and a word that I've learned to take entirely for granted: relationship. It's a word that I feel has changed significantly over the course of the years, or maybe it's just me, I know that how I now understand the word relationship is very different from how I once understood the word. Now, of course, we ought to have the technical definition of the word, and according to dictionary.com:

1.

a connection, association, or involvement.

2.

connection between persons by blood or marriage.

3.

an emotional or other connection between people: the relationship between teachers and students.

4.

a sexual involvement; affair.

Okay, fair enough. For a while growing up, I generally only thought of the word relationship in the context of the fourth definition presented above. I blame television and my own naivete. As I grew older, I became more and more aware of the breadth of the word, and it began encompassing the other three definitions. Relationships nowadays for me, encompass more and more the third definition, that is my "default definition", what I automatically think of when I hear the word.