With the Qualia Quotient, we are always trying to pull our Interest and Participation levels toward the center at 5 out of 10 – so that each are matched as closely as possible in the middle.
Interest Level 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Participation Level 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
What’s important is, then, when we are in balance we can look – we are looking, just as if we got into balance standing in the center of a seesaw – beyond our own, selfish landscape, beyond the landmarks and pathways which, just as all roads lead to Rome, lead back to ourselves.
Reaching out into other landscapes invites us to set aside the time to consciously ritual. And in that ritual (let’s say, for example, that we are going to play with our kids more – the landscape of parenting!), we will focus on their expressions, physical, verbal, emotional. Our task is to notice the qualia with which we may relate, positively or negatively – something they are projecting, which we need to play with, experiment with.
With kids, of course, the best way is to talk to them, even if they are too young to understand. They will grok that they are experiencing something that can be expressed, perhaps with words, perhaps some other way. So, when you come out of your conscious ritual you might have started a new Qualiadelic Relationship with something expressed by your child. This is a transformation from the old, coming home from work, patting him or her on the head, how was your day, etc – which may suit your landscape, but probably not the child’s.
And so it is with all our conscious ritualing when we notice what is beyond our landscape and we peer into someone else’s – when we experience their landmarks and pathways. We venture, engage, and find out if they are good. If it works, a relationship can be founded upon it – one that suits both parties, is mutually beneficial, that we can share back and forth and which will grow over time. This also keeps a relationship from going stale, or even dying.
We want more than a symbiotic relationship (a relationship that works but provides no more than the normal or basic benefits). In a symbiotic relationship a dad gets the normal benefits out of having a child, and the kid gets basic benefits out of having a dad (or a boss gets from an employee and vice versa, or both people in a romantic relationship, and so on). We are human beings, after all, with the ability to inspire and be inspired! What we want is a relationship that never stops growing, that is a living tradition.
Monitoring our qualia quotient – which is a kind of a thermostat to gauge our conscious ritualing – will help to keep things alive. As we repeat our rituals we always want to keep our Interest and Participation levels from getting out of sync – we want to stay balanced. A child, or whoever the other person is, may not be able to do this, but there is no better way to lead in life than by example.