Life's Complex Web of Relationships

I deleted the previous post, didn't think that having GP essays here would be of any particular interest to anyone haha. Anyway life's good for me, only 2 more papers to go before I can say bye bye to JC life (unless I go back as a teacher, which is very highly improbable).

Dismissing life as being simple may perhaps be a little too, well, simplistic. I know life's much more than that. It's not just life in the long term, as in the major decisions that you make e.g. university degree, career path etc., but also life in the short term. I refer to those little trivialities that don't really matter over time, but are vital for sustaining your dwindling interest in living life, such as a nice encouraging note, or a cheery smile on your old grandma's wizened face. Occasionally, these trivialities could turn out to be annoyances that bug you so much that you scream "God!!" in utter desperation. And yes, they usually cause you to ask why God put you through such a rigourous - and painful - perfection process.

As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend. - Proverbs 27:17
As can be inferred from this verse, one tool particularly useful to God when He shapes us into perfection is other people. When people meet people, relationships develop, and herein lies the problem - relationships can be very complicated. Here are just some examples:

1. Parent vs. child: Parent must learn to give child freedom, but must teach him to exercise self-discipline in enjoying this freedom, ironically through discipline itself. Child must respect and honour parent, but sometimes doing so simply because he is the parent (especially when the parent is being unreasonable) reeks of disgusting hypocrisy.
2. Friend vs. friend: The absence of trust eventually brings misunderstanding, then backstabbing, and then hatred and so on. I'm sure there's little else I can comment on without sounding preachy, except that when such things happen, it is up to you to make a value judgement. Should you have made such a friend in the first place, and should you forgive and forget or make a clean break? If you really must determine a winner, the one with courage (to do what's right in the eyes of God - and not what's convenient) usually prevails over the one with selfishness in his heart.
3. Boy vs. girl: I'm still a teenager (with all the angst, insecurity and - OMG - acne that comes with being one), so ARGH WTH WTH WTH.

Try counting the number of relationships you have with other people. You'll still be doing so on your dying breath - there are 6 billion different people on this planet. It's just too easy to be caught in life's complex web of relationships. So we shouldn't be afraid of getting caught, it's bound to happen at many points in our lives. But let's not struggle on our own and become further entangled, but let God extricate us with His peace and wisdom, and learn from the process.