In earlier post I promised to write about the things I love about Mia, my collaborator on this blog and in my efforts to create an Intentional Community in Second Life. As I thought about it, I realized these were the same things I look for in a partner or collaborator on any important venture -- projects, enterprises, communities. And the same qualities I treasure in a friend. And the same qualities I try to exemplify myself, in practicing to Let-Myself-Change to be a better model, in trying to make the world a better place*.
Mia exemplifies these twelve qualities:
- Intelligence: A combination of good critical thinking skills and excellent instincts (and a willingness to trust them). Smart people like Mia are fun, and sexy.
- Emotional Strength: Freedom from neediness -- it's OK to love attention and appreciation, but when someone can't live without constant external validation, they can become unbearable. If you want others to love you, you have to love yourself first. Mia has learned to do that. That seems to be rare in First Life and Second Life.
- Attention Skills: Emotional sensitivity, perceptiveness, awareness, openness, capacity to listen, to focus the senses on what is really happening, and collaboratively figure out what it all means. Mia is not one of those people who lives their whole life in their heads, or in an emotional cocoon. She's learned to get outside herself, and she's very generous with her attention.
- Honesty: About what you love, what you can't stand, what you believe in, and what you have doubts about. Mia just gets it all out there. She's always offering constructive ideas and alternatives. And she never, ever lies (that includes saying nothing when there is something that must be said). She calls it "taking the temperature" of our relationship. It's delightfully refreshing, and reassuring.
- Communication Skills: Ability to articulate concisely and precisely what you know and what you think and what you love, orally and in writing (and to show, not just tell). Mia's a writer by vocation, and she's very good at it.
- Learning Skills: The self-directed ability to discover, access and process useful information (captured, experiential, and in conversation). This is the key to self-management and independence and making yourself a useful and valuable partner. Mia is self-driven to learn. And she's more open-minded than I am.
- Passion and Responsibility: Belief that what's possible can happen, and energy and a sense of responsibility directed to a shared purpose. We know what we have to do, and we're going to do it. Come see what we've done already in Second Life. Talk to any of those who've come to know and love Mia.
- Curiosity, Imagination and Creativity: The desire and capacity to find out what you don't know, to think about what could be, and to bring those imaginings to fruition. Mia is so curious, she purrs.
- Different Perspectives & Complementary Strengths: We are often attracted to people who share our beliefs, our culture, and our skills, but in my experience the best partners are those whose gifts and points of view complement each other (i.e. neither conflict nor overlap). We don't argue, but we poke fun at each other when we have different ideas. We laugh a lot. Yin and yang.
- Self-Knowledge, and Knowledge of Others' Capacities: Knowing which capacities you have, and which you lack, and what you know, and what you don't, and what others can do better than you can, is enormously important to collaboration and love, especially in coping with challenges. We've both spent a lot of time in contemplation, getting to know ourselves, and now, each other.
- Love, Respect and Trust: Most of us love and trust those who love and trust us in return. The alternative is dysfunctional and dangerous, a recipe for either abuse or co-dependency. We look at many of the relationships of others we know in First Life and Second Life, and shake our heads. There are a lot of co-dependents out there. We're co-independents.
- BGP: Beauty, grace and presence: Deny it all you want, we all prefer to be with people who are attractive, gracious, charismatic, and energizing. Some are naturally more gifted at this than others, but we can all improve, with practice. Ask anyone who knows Mia, they'll tell you -- she's lovely and charming and completely adorable.
Happy Valentine's Day, Mia. LYAW.
* So I confess this list is doing double-duty on my other blog, in homage to my long-suffering readers. The image, BTW, is from doggybloggy.com |
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intentional community
July 2008