Besides work, the other major are that impact on the quality of life is the kind of relations we have. So people feel their work is so boring that it depletes their psychic energy. And there can also be conflict between work and family, so that a person who loves work or is required to work a lot may neglect family and friends, and vice versa. Matthew says: “I am so involved in an idea I am working on, I get so carried away, that I am all by myself. I am not listening to what anyone says. I am not paying attention to anybody. And I tend to drift away from people. It could be that is I were not an inventor but had a routine job, I would spend more time at home and I would pay more attention to them. So maybe people who do not like their jobs love their home more.”

There is quite a bit of truth to this remake, and the reason is simple. Given that attention is a limited resource, when one goal takes up all our psychic energy, there is none left over. Nevertheless, it is difficult to be happy if one neglects either one of these two dimensions. Many people married to their jobs are aware of it, and find ways of compensating either by choosing an understanding spouse, an understanding child for support, or by being very open about this issue: “I was very fortunate, I believe, that my son felt his duty in life and his pleasure in life would come from me. And that the way he could best contribute would be to see to it that I would not be bothered by problems involved in the household; that he would settle all of these problems in such a way that I could devote all of my time to my work.”

However, few people could call themselves as fortune as Matthew in this respect. A more realistic venue is to find ways to balance the meaningfulness of the rewards we get from work and from relationships. For despite the fact that almost everyone claims the family is the most important concern in their lives. Very few—especially few men—behave as if this were the case. True, most men are convinced that their lives are dedicated to the family, and from a material standpoint this might be true. However, it takes more than food in the icebox and two cars in the garage to keep a family going. A group of people is kept together by two kinds of energy: material energy provided by food, warmth, physical car, and money, and the psychic energy people investing attention in each other’s goals.

Unless parents and child(ren) share ideas, emotions, activities, memories, and dreams, their relationship will survive only because it satisfies material requirements. As a psychic entity, it will exist only at the most primitive level. Amazingly enough, many people refuse to see this point. The most widespread attitude seems to be that as long as material requirements are provided for, a family will take care of itself, it will be a warm, harmonious, permanent refuge in a cold and dangerous World. It is very common to meet successful men in their forties and fifties who are stunned when their wives suddenly leave or their child(ren) get into serious trouble. Did they not always love their family? Did they not invest all their energy to make them happy?

True, they used to spend hours talking each day, but now they never had more than a few minutes each day to talk, but how could they have done otherwise with all the demands from the job? The emotion of love is an exception to all the general rules—it is the strongest of all emotions, and yet it is the only one that has no peculiar means of expression. Matthew struggled to arrive at a means of describing the emotion of love, but in the end he concluded that it was: “A proper or peculiar means of expression; and it is a strong desire to touch the beloved person is commonly felt. Love is the most difficult of all emotions to study, but it is the strongest of which the mind is capable. I admire my son enormously, and his influence is what fuels me to work.”

Matthew goes on to say, “Love is a remarkable example of power, when you see someone you love, blood flow to the muscle increase, the heart beat becomes stronger and breathing improves. Most people have observed the intense bond of attachment that usually develops between a father and his child(ren), a bond that enables a father to pick up a hurt or frightened child and rapidly eliminate all external signs of pain and fear. The pain I endure in order to reach my child(ren) does nothing, but strengthen my attachment to them. Worry, fear, and pain are eliminated when I see my child(ren), and internal pain is also eliminated. I am a human being touched with the blighted hand of genius. My ultimate achievement will be surprising to everyone.”

The more empathetic you are with another, allowing yourself to truly feel or emotionally resonate with what they are feeling, the less likely it is that you will get aggressive with them. (Teaching child(ren) from a young age to “imagine how you would feel is you were treated like that, or is that happened to you” can help foster a healthy empathy. Having compassion for another individual does not mean that you do not hold them accountable, nor that you will not express any displeasure over what they are doing, but that you will not put them out of your heart. Anger and compassion can coexist, but aggression and compassion cannot. I often wonder what would happen to my kids if they were left to fend for themselves? They would die. I thought about it for a year. Take pleasure in the success of others.