When we lived in Watertown, we lived in a two-family home. Mark and Sue lived above us. Mark was an assistant football coach at Harvard and Sue managed a health club. Every Saturday morning, Mark and Sue would rise before 6 a.m. and tromp around the house getting ready for a football game. Part of their preparation was loading an enormous six-foot long cooler with Gatorade. They were gone all day. On Sundays, they watched sports on TV. They took our trash out, shoveled the snow off the steps, put up the storm windows, and in general, made everything run smoothly. We managed to feed ourselves. Just barely though.

We lived in such close proximity to them that we could smell their meals as they wafted through the vents in the bathroom. We also knew about the minute details of their lives. Sue stored their winter clothes in large plastic bins in the basement with itemized lists on the side. I’m actually scared to think of what they might have noticed about our lives.

Symbiosis is the close association of two dissimilar organisms. We often live and work in close association with others in these sorts of relationships:

Mutualism: a symbiotic relationship in which both organisms benefit.Commensalism: a symbiotic relationship in which one organism benefits and the other is unaffected.

Parasitism: a symbiotic relationship in which one organism benefits and the other is harmed.

Our relationship with Mark and Sue was a commensal relationship. We benefited greatly from the relationship, but contributed very little. I don’t think we affected them at all. They seemed so well-adjusted, so happy, that we could have been aliens and they would have continued to put up the storm windows.

In the workplace, I try to cultivate more mutualistic relationships in which we both benefit. When I taught at a high school, I became friends with another teacher, Freddi. We became partners in a grant to develop a water quality curriculum for students. We both contributed as intellectual and pedagogical partners, we both benefited enormously as our teaching-lives became more satisfying.

Likewise, my friend, Jenny, and I managed to survive a very stressful workplace by working out at lunch. We used elliptical machines next to each other in a fancy-schmancy gym, brought books for each other to read, and traded stories in the locker room. It was only an hour a day (ahem, maybe more for some of us), but we helped each other survive. And in the end, that’s really all that seemed to matter.

Parasitism seems to be a trickier relationship. At first, I couldn’t seem to find any parasitic relationships, but then I remembered how I used to glom on Anne in college for help with hydrology problem sets. I was definitely a parasite, possibly an equation-sucking one, but I would hope I contributed to the betterment of her life in other ways. Stuffed baked potatoes, my culinary masterpiece. Possibly wine coolers.

When I first met Jim, he lived across from an older woman named Rosella. She was very kind, but she always wanted something from Jim. First, she wanted help hanging a picture. Then she wanted help clearing a drain. Finally, she wanted him to install a toilet. He didn’t mind helping her, but he explained he wasn’t a plumber. She wanted more. She wanted him to take her to sort of raucous night club to hear flamenco music. She invited me too. Eventually, we turned the lights off and hid in Jim’s room to avoid her. Not very mature. Sort of humiliating, really. But she didn’t seem to take no as no. She seemed to always try harder.

Every relationships involves an exchange of energy of sorts. Sometimes this is to your benefit, sometimes to your detriment, and sometimes there is no effect at all.