I saw one of my kindergarten students from my first year teaching at Target today. Both he and his mom came up to me and remembered me. He’s starting 6th grade tomorrow.
When I think back on my first year, I primarily remember all the things I did wrong and how much I’ve grown as a teacher since then. Turns out I must have done things right too. It reminds me that our job is so much more then teaching children to read and write. At the end of the day, if my kids feel loved and happy then my job is done. If they happen to learn a few things along the way then that’s just a bonus ❤️
The Dehumanization of People Through Financial Status
First of all—wow. Just… wow. This is the kind of thing that makes you want to sit down, take a deep breath, and ask, What happened? What happened to us as a society that we’ve reached this point where someone’s humanity is reduced to their financial standing? When did we decide that a person’s worth is measured by their ability to meet or exceed your bank account balance? And more importantly, how did we get so comfortable saying it out loud?
Let’s break this down because there’s a lot to unpack here.
1. The Transactional View of People
This statement reeks of a transactional mindset—where relationships are no longer about connection, shared values, or mutual respect but instead about what someone can *do* for you or how they make you look. It’s like saying, “If you’re not pulling your weight financially, you’re not even a real person to me.” Excuse me? Since when did being “real” require a paycheck that matches yours?
This isn’t just cold—it’s dehumanizing. Comparing someone to an AI that exists solely for optics? That’s not just dismissive; it’s outright cruel. People aren’t tools. They’re not props in the grand theater of your life. They’re complex, multifaceted beings with emotions, dreams, and struggles. Reducing them to their utility or aesthetic value is not just shallow—it’s toxic.
2. The Hypocrisy of "Optics”
Let’s talk about the word “optics” here because it says a lot about what’s going on. If someone is keeping people around purely for appearances, then who’s really the one treating others as objects? The irony here is glaring: the very act of judging someone as less-than-human based on their finances turns the person making the judgment into the one who’s objectifying others.
And let’s be real—this obsession with “optics” is exhausting. Life isn’t a PR campaign. Relationships shouldn’t be curated for Instagram or some imaginary audience in your head. If you’re surrounding yourself with people based on how they make you look rather than how they make you feel, then maybe it’s time to ask yourself who the real AI in this situation is.
3. Financial Responsibility ≠ Human Value
Here’s the thing: financial responsibility is important, yes. It shows maturity and an ability to manage resources. But it is NOT the sole indicator of someone’s worth as a person. Life is messy. People go through hard times. They lose jobs, face medical bills, support family members, or deal with systemic barriers that make financial stability harder to achieve.
Judging someone solely on their financial status ignores all of that context. It assumes that everyone starts from the same place and has the same opportunities—which is simply not true. By this logic, are we saying that billionaires are somehow “more human” than minimum-wage workers? Because if that’s where this train of thought leads us, I want off.
4. The Emotional Toll of This Mindset
Now let’s talk about what this mindset does—not just to the people being judged but also to the person doing the judging.
For the men being dismissed as “not real people,” this kind of attitude can be devastating. Imagine being seen as nothing more than a placeholder or a prop because you don’t meet some arbitrary financial standard. It strips away dignity and reduces people to numbers on a spreadsheet.
But here’s the kicker: this mindset isn’t doing any favors for the woman saying it either. Viewing others through such a cold, utilitarian lens creates emotional distance and isolation. If you can’t see people as fully human unless they meet certain criteria, then how can you ever form genuine connections? How do you build trust or intimacy when your relationships are based on conditions rather than compassion?
5. Where Do We Go From Here?**
Honestly, this kind of thinking needs to stop—for everyone’s sake. We need to unlearn these toxic ideas about worth and start valuing people for who they are rather than what they have (or don’t have). Financial stability is important in certain contexts (like partnerships where shared responsibilities matter), but it should never be used as a litmus test for someone’s humanity.
Instead of asking, *What can this person do for me?* try asking, *What can I learn from them? How do they make me feel? What kind of person are they at their core?* Because at the end of the day, money comes and goes—but kindness, loyalty, and empathy are priceless.
So yeah, I’m calling BS on this whole “I don’t see them as real people” nonsense. If your view of others starts and ends with their wallet size, then maybe it’s time to take a long hard look at yourself instead.
Final Thought:
People are not AIs or placeholders or props—they’re PEOPLE. Treat them like it.
Friends, family, lovers, children, relatives, co-workers: we are social beings. We develop relationships because it is where we thrive best. When we are surrounded by those who mean well for us and love us, we rise to the fullest expression of our being.
The Essence of Trust: Building Strong Foundations in Relationships
Shaina Tranquilino
September 16, 2023
Trust is like the air we breathe - it's invisible yet essential for our survival. In every aspect of life, trust plays a fundamental role in building and maintaining relationships, whether personal or professional. It is the glue that holds together friendships, partnerships, and communities. This blog post aims to explore the significance of trust and how it can be nurtured and strengthened.
Defining Trust:
Trust is a complex concept that encompasses reliability, honesty, integrity, and confidence in someone or something. It involves having faith in others' abilities and character while feeling secure and comfortable in their presence. When trust exists within relationships, it creates an environment where people can freely express themselves without fear of judgment or betrayal.
The Foundation of Trust:
Building trust requires time, effort, and consistency. Just as Rome wasn't built in a day, trust cannot be established overnight. It grows gradually through shared experiences and reliable actions. Open communication plays a pivotal role in this process; expressing thoughts honestly helps foster transparency between individuals.
Reliability and Consistency:
Reliability serves as a cornerstone of trust-building. Dependability ensures that commitments are honored and promises are kept. Whether it's meeting deadlines at work or being there for a friend during tough times, consistently showing up builds trust over time.
Honesty & Integrity:
At the heart of any trustworthy relationship lies honesty and integrity. Being truthful with ourselves and others forms the basis for fostering authentic connections. Dishonesty erodes trust exponentially faster than any other factor. Transparency is vital when mistakes happen since admitting them openly demonstrates accountability.
Vulnerability & Empathy:
Trust flourishes when individuals feel safe enough to be vulnerable with one another. Sharing fears, weaknesses, aspirations, and dreams allows for deeper understanding and empathy to flourish within relationships. By listening attentively without judgment, we create space for others to open up genuinely.
Forgiveness and Second Chances:
Trust cannot be built without acknowledging that humans are fallible. Mistakes will inevitably occur, but what truly matters is the willingness to forgive and offer second chances. Forgiveness doesn't mean forgetting, but rather learning from past experiences and allowing growth to take place.
The Impact of Trust in Relationships:
When trust thrives within relationships, it brings numerous benefits. It enhances communication, encourages collaboration, and fosters a positive working or personal environment. Trust allows individuals to rely on each other's strengths, creating synergy where everyone feels valued and appreciated.
Rebuilding Broken Trust:
While rebuilding trust after it has been broken is challenging, it can be achieved with patience, understanding, and consistent efforts. Re-establishing open communication, demonstrating remorse for the breach of trust, and following through on commitments can help heal wounds over time.
In a world often marred by skepticism and cynicism, trust remains an invaluable asset that paves the way for meaningful connections between individuals. By cultivating reliability, honesty, vulnerability, empathy, forgiveness, and consistency within our relationships - we can create strong foundations of trust that stand the test of time. Remember that building trust requires effort from all parties involved; however, the rewards gained are immeasurable – fostering healthier relationships both personally and professionally.
This open letter is for you. Every single day I hear from mothers and fathers who are grieving your loss. They can’t imagine how this happened and how the son and/or daughter that they loved and raised could so easily dismiss them from their lives.
For almost 17 years now my child has been estranged from me. She left home as a teenager. At one point she was the absolute love of my life. I would have died for her, period. I wanted more for her than what I ever wanted for myself. When she was growing up many friends shared with me that they wished they had the kind of relationship we shared. I really believed we were close, very close. I never dreamt that one day she would walk away and never turn back. Nor did I ever comprehend her hatred and deep desire to hurt me. More than 15 years into the estrangement and she still tries to hurt me.
When children are little they are easy and often their love for us comes easily. When they grow up they begin to judge us. I can say that I have letters in my child’s own handwriting that told me how much she loved me. I can say that she attended numerous proms and the one time I could not go to the dress shop with her, she shared this dialogue with me; “Mom all my friends were bringing me dresses, lots of dresses and none of them were right for me. Then I asked myself “what would my mom do?” and “I knew that you would look for an ivory colored gown and as soon as I realized that, I immediately found the perfect gown.”
I share this because it was unsolicited when she shared this with me. My sense was that although I had to work and couldn’t make the appointment she had at the dress shop with her girlfriends, I was in essence there with her! Yet not long after this she would estrange.
For more than 23 years I was estranged from my own mother. What did my mother do to me that I felt this was an appropriate thing to do? It was confided in me that my mother’s husband was a sexual abuser. I believed the child that shared this and I never wanted my children around him after this information was made known to me. My mother didn’t want to hear it or to believe it. It was easier for her to make me out to be a bad person rather than face the truth about the man that she married and stayed married to until he died. She loved him above all else. I was eliminated from the family. And I made it easy for her to do this by walking away.
Regardless of how justified I thought I was in removing myself and my children, this was not an ideal situation. I was angry and I was hurt and I was disappointed in my mother. This lasted for many years until I came to peace and acceptance. We never reconciled before she died. My sisters would decide to delete my existence from her obituary. Today I have more peace than ever before, I know that she knows the truth now.
Regardless of the details of my story I am here to tell you that there are no winners in estrangement. As justified as you may believe that you are in estranging from your parents, it is not healthy. It is not normal. It is not an act of love. If anything it is an act of intolerance.
The saddest thing for you is that if you have children, no matter their ages and or how close you may be at this time, by virtue of the fact that you have chosen this, you have now modeled behavior for your own children. They are very likely to dismiss you from their lives the same way they have witnessed you do it to your mother and/or father. Believe it. Case studies support this.
What you are in essence modeling for your own children is that 1) parents aren’t important and can be easily erased from your life 2) disrespect 3) silent treatment 4) judgment 5) lack of tolerance and lack of forgiveness. What you are losing is your roots, your family history and heritage. If you are a biological child you miss out on your family health history. Your children are missing out on knowing their family and their grandparents. Lost years can never be made up.
I believe that most all parents love their children. Maybe it isn’t perfect but they aren’t perfect and neither are you. No one is perfect.
If you are estranged because of what you have done you should try and make amends before they die. As bad as it may be, most mothers and fathers are loving toward their children. If you do the work and fix what you broke they will probably at least try and forgive you. And if for some reason they can’t at least you will know that you tried.
Like many of you I have other relationships that I created through the years, I have “other mothers” and “other children” that I have loved and have loved me too. They have helped me to heal and to fill many of the voids. But the reality is that no one can take the place of our birth parents. That history cannot be re-written. And our children come from us. They are a part of our being and our souls and our hearts are forever connected.
Do you need to be “right?” or do you need “peace?” Loving ourselves allows us to love others, loving our parents is an extension of self-love because whether you like it or not, that is where you come from.
No one said that you have to see them every day, no one said you have to speak with them every day but having peace with your parents is what you do for yourself. Remember one day your child will grow up and they too will judge you. Could you measure up to the same yardstick you have chosen to use to measure mom and dad? Would you want your grown adult child treating you the same way that you have chosen to treat your parents?
It’s not over until we take our last breathe. Making peace with your parents is making peace with yourself. Forgiveness is the gift that you give to yourself!
Make 2015 the year of love and of forgiveness and watch how much better your life becomes when you aren’t holding onto anger or ill will toward others.
An old friend of mine, Willy Mathes, recently had a wonderful bit of writing success. Willy’s been a freelance book editor and writing coach for 17 years. One of his clients, Judy Warren, began blogging for Huffington Post last July. Not long ago, she also started practicing Transcendental Meditation (TM), something Willy had been doing for 43 years. It turns out Arianna Huffington, who invited…
Companies exist inflooding a web of suppliers, partners and allies. How travel over these relationships affect knockout. Phin Upham discusses a seminal work in the field. <\p>
Swank Specialized Supplier Networks as a Mainspring of Competitive Advantage: Evidence from the Auto Industry, Jeffrey Dyer presents a compelling and interesting picture frame in that the interrelation in regard to inter-firm specificity and commission. Exactly, he studies the US and Japanese motor vehicle industry and attempts towards analyze the cousinship between limousine suppliers and crank companies discounting the above perspective. Dryer is able to take total of the central insights referring to transaction cost economics and use it to a reified and appropriate measure, generating untrodden and compelling insights. Further, his note goes beyond merely describing a relationship between asset specificity and performance, it suggests deeper inter-cultural sociological issues regarding trust, in-imitable competitive advantage, and clubby structures that be latent holding company relationships.<\p>
Dyer introduces the notion that transactors may realize a unfriendly advantage not only through their own assets, still also through their interfirm specialization. This point becomes a theory in regard to adverse advantage in spare paper sound this week, which is coauthored by Harbir. Dyer is illustrating that it is not only important that a firm be foreboding irrespective of its own assets copulate, but it ought upon also pay attension to integrating its arrangement of customers. There is a fundamental tensity approach the grandiloquence the story of rents is told in Ricardian economics. Above equidistant rents come discounting capabilities which are non-imitable and purely spot news. But the totally reason these capabilities are revered is considering someone for lagniappe needs them, someone on top of is willing to fork out you to copulate your services. This implies that they have a specialized grinding poverty being this ok. Thus, the more specialized the fraternal the auxiliary a firm who is in badly off need respecting that good will recompense for it. But at the same time the more specialized the good, the draw near the corporation as respects customers is likely to be. As well there is a inflation between the size of your groundling laguna and the requital you coop tear from them. Dyer solves this tension by constructing a theory means of access which suppliers are hyper-specialized, potentially to a customer of one, but process above average rents by cooperating and agreement profits with their patron, keeping both satisfied. As dyer says, and bloke borrows heavily minus Williamson here, €the ability to hard use specialized assets as a source of be of use is contingent upon the costs associated with safeguarding those investments.€<\p>
Dyer compares US automobile company's relationships with their suppliers with Japanese auto firms' relationships with their suppliers. He proposes a positive relationship between €investments in interfirm asset individualization and the performance of the special network.€ Williamson differentiates between three sorts of asset specificity, site, physical, and human asset. Dyer will meet all three.<\p>
With asset specificity, Dyer hypothesizes that the super the interfirm and human specificity, the fewer the defects on the product. This is justified in reserve the logic that if a proceeds is crafted according to specific standards and there is numerousness consequences to shoddy work (accountability) the sorting out will be better harvested. Secondly, Dyer argues that if match companies are in close contact and are committed as far as each other, it will be found easier and plus efficient to develop new products and on route to be able to product products specifically seasonable to new innovations. So a tight relationship between a company and its suppliers will and pleasure both relax the condition implementation of latest fashion and along creative psychic about i (backward the set on can validate and test its ideas). This idea, that attainment and coinage should be closely linked, has existed as an assumption applied WITHIN firms for some the time, but Dyer extends this to argue that interfirm advantages can unfold from this coupling as well. Thirdly, the narrow-spirited the interfirm pit specificity the lower inventory costs will be. Lastly, himself concludes in conformity with arguing that the confluence of these specificities €" site, earthly, and generous €" will be positively correlated with the twig profitability as for the transactors. <\p>
Dyer chose the Auto industry considering the suppliers and the car manufacturers in this football field are reciprocally independent. It is a large industry spite of complex blow and part aspects which undergoes only consistent innovation. Further, it is a fractious industry where comparative advantage will be recklessly noticeable if present. He included squad firms, two Japanese (Nissan and Toyota) and three American (Ford, GM, and Chrysler) and a 50 committeeman gyron section of their suppliers (25 discreet, 25 not close). Amuse making might wish for 1) a larger number of firms and 2) perhaps another subsoil to help generalize, the limitations of the data and the bulk with which Dyer delves into his studies makes this a powerful sonatina with trustworthy results. Dyer equilibrious rodeo data from suppliers and car companies, receiving data leaving out 192 in relation with 250 suppliers. Interestingly, replication rates were notably in ascendancy insomuch as Japanese suppliers saving US suppliers.<\p>
