We are all in relationship

This week's Independent New & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.

Michael Commane

It’s four years since a nurse in the hospital, where I am working, suggested to me that I watch ‘Breaking Bad’.

I took her advice and watched two or three episodes before deciding it was not for me.

On one of the first days after the cocooning regulations had been lifted I was out walking with a friend. During our walk we were talking about time spent watching screens during the pandemic. One thing led to another before my friend asked me if I had ever watched ‘Breaking Bad’. I told him my story. He suggested I give it another try because he thought I’d enjoy it.

I am now an addict. Oops, no, not to drugs, but to the series.

Most evenings I watch one episode but once or twice I have done some binge viewing and watched two episodes. 

If you haven’t seen it, then I strongly recommend viewing. I’m watching it on Netflix. It aired between 2008 and 2013. It’s made up of 62 episodes spread over five seasons. 

The series finale was watched by over 10.3 million people in the US. It is regarded by many experts as one of the best ever television series.

It’s the story of fictional Walter White, a chemistry teacher, who has learned that he has lung cancer. 

He is a highly gifted chemist and teacher. He has a wife and a son with cerebral palsy. Early in the series his wife is pregnant.

He needs money to finance his cancer treatment and to support his family.

Walt sets out to do what he does best and manufactures methamphetamine. He makes the best crystal meth in Albuquerque. 

And the series is about all that that entails, killings, crimes, wrong-doing of every shape and size. At times I have to turn away from the violence. There are also funny aspects to it and plenty of black humour. But a continuing theme right through the series is that of relationship. And I find that intriguing. 

Last Sunday week, June 7, Christians celebrated the feast of the Trinity, which is about the mystery of three persons in one God. It might sound quite mad, especially to non-Christians, but once we try to say anything about God, language breaks down, almost. The Trinity is about relationship in God.

Has it ever crossed your mind that everything we do in our lives involves us in relationships? Our parents, our children, our spouses, our lovers. The place where we work involves us in relationships. Indeed, we have a relationship with the sea, with the air we breathe. 

It really is extraordinary. Some relationships are more important than others. There are relationships that enhance our lives and there are those that damage and can indeed, destroy us.

Christianity offers us an extraordinary insight into our own humanity. 

I’m often baffled how we can so easily dismiss as boring and of no relevance to our lives so many of the themes of the Christian faith.

I’ve not yet seen an episode of ‘Breaking Bad’ that does not involve a serious study of relationship.

And then to think that the ultimate living out of a perfect relationship is to be found in God, surely that has to set in front of us an extraordinary ideal, something to which each one of us can aspire? 

Yes, everything about God is extraordinary. So what? 

Remember those lines from Oscar Wilde? ‘Never love anybody who treats you like you are ordinary’.

Wise words. None of us is ordinary.