intimacy and bonding

I think people form stronger connections over the shared ways that they
find to make the every day enjoyable, not the excruciating moments more bearable.

I know that seems wrong. We've all seen Survivor. We all know that a traumatic experience can link a group for life. It's true that times of heightened emotion bring a special incentive to form a temporarily sustaining bond. I don't deny the importance or intensity of relationships formed in this time. Intimacy is fierce when the walls have already been knocked down.

But is it sustaining, really, when the crisis ends and drama subsides?

I think many of us have learned fear feeling so much that we've also learned to parcel out the intensity of our emotions for our most needy or dear moments. I wish it weren't so, but it feels like, sometimes, people really need a bomb to drop to burst that barricade open enough to let a little real meaning in.
The subtley of learning to trust, love and appreciate someone for what they give and want from you, how they enrich your most predictable and routine moments is lost in the drama we create to reach out and touch someone.

And in the end, how can you compete with it? When every desire becomes a need, every expectant moment a dramatic event to unfold, how do you sift through the cobble and smoke to find a way to recognize and share the most sublime and sustaining offerings?

It's like learning to feel the beams of the sun when a small fire is nipping at your ankles.