The second law of thermodynamics states that hot things always cool unless you do something to stop it. This expresses a fundamental and simple truth about the universe: that disorder, left unchecked increases over time. Energy disperses, and systems descend into chaos. Cells within your body are degrading and dying, a coworker is making a potentially disastrous mistake, the floor is getting dusty, and the temperature of your hot coffee is becoming lukewarm. From a broader perspective, businesses are failing, crimes and revolutions are occurring, and important relationships are growing cold. Life energy spreads out and leaves a system. If you want to heat a relationship back up, you need to do the work and have a power source.* A lot of energy has to be put into any system to preserve its ordered life.
Most businesses fail—as many as 80% in the first 18 months. One way to understand this is the above principle of entropy. Every business which follows an energetic mission blueprint has multiple decisions that arise daily that challenge these procedures, curb enthusiasm, and could eventually destroy the business.* Relationships, be it a business or a marriage, progress and survive by employing the power of interactive mutual influence with a gracious expectation of heat and light. Building durability, managing chaotic decline with faithful, resolute one-day-at-a time revival of personal vigor and collaborative soundness will minimize chaotic decay before it results in ruin.*
A marriage is a relationship that starts with excitement and fire. It, like a new business, will not be durable at first. There will be daily decline of heat when these two people disagree about anything, such as what to do when the floor gets dusty. Predictably, energy dissipates daily and threatens to overwhelm the system permanently when children arrive. Sometimes grueling effort is necessary to restore strength to this natural relationship droop. Reviving marriage – from torrid to tepid and back requires each spouse to talk to themselves as well as to each other, and to practice in with the good and out with the bad, if they want to be a happy, healthy, nurtured organism.
Like the cell membrane that filters all living cells and separates the interior of the cell from the outside environment, families also have boundaries. To prevent life energy from being permanently dispersed out of the system, the boundary must be clearly defined so anyone can determine whether the surrounding world’s influence is beneficial for the health and safety of the family recipe.* Couples are responsible for managing this boundary of semipermeable filters for building, reinvigorating, restoring, and preserving their own individual body, mind and spirit (their soul) as well as helping each other to arrange and manage nourishment and elimination for the success and survival of the soul of the family.
*General sources were consulted for information on the second law of dynamics, entropy, and cellular function for this blog.