Getting Along

"The capacity for getting along with our neighbor depends to a large extent on the capacity for getting along with ourselves.  The self-respecting individual will try to be as tolerant of his neighbor's shortcomings as he is of his own."...Eric Hoffer

Getting along.  Easier said than done?  Sometimes we feel like we're dealing with difficult people all the time, at work, school, neighbours, even our friends and family.  I'm not an expert, but I will say that I believe the ability to get along well with people is the most important life skill to learn ourselves and to teach to our children.  I think the key is understanding ourselves with honesty, thinking from different perspectives, learning from our experiences, and in general believing that all people are good and equal.  Personally, I also think we need to know that it is expected of us to get along with each other.  We all have to try.

I used to work with a person whom I felt disliked me.  I thought she went out of her way to put me down and belittle my accomplishments.  She used to make me feel sick.  Probably I made her feel sick in some way too.  But we had to get along because neither of us was planning to quit our job.  I started to gain some understanding of why her comments bothered me so much and why she may have made them.  But understanding was not enough to change the situation.  But someone suggested this to me, and it really worked:

Write out all the things about the person that irritated me on one piece of paper and then write out all the things I liked or respected about the person on another.  When finished, tear up the negative list, and only keep the positive.  Going forward only focus on the positive traits she possessed.

This person loved to garden and was very talented at it.  Her face used to light up every time she spoke of flowers.  I found something I could talk to her about that brought out her charm, her interests and her confidence.  I asked her about her garden often and tried to take an interest in her hobby.  Our relationship changed for the better after that, having found a neutral place we could connect as people and not just as co-workers.

I know I've talked about my favourite show, Lost, a few times and I think that show is a perfect example of how getting along it key to survival.  Right from the early beginnings you could see Jack emerging as the group leader, here he is in one of my favourite Jack scenes - his "live together die alone" speech:

I get goosebumps when I watch Jack and all the others listening to him in this scene.  I know he was talking about his father here (how his father died alone in part because they couldn't get along), and that made his message even more poignant.  He really believed that "if we can't live together, then we're gonna die alone", because that was the recent experience he was currently coping with.  Just a beautiful scene..hope you enjoyed it to.

Cheers!

Linda