E.L.E. –Jackie Moon

I’ll just come out and say it.  We never really got along with our next door neighbors.  No, not The Quinns. C’mon.  We love them, of course!  The ones on the other side.  It’s hard to pinpoint the exact reason.  To start, they were older when we moved in and never particularly friendly to our young kids.  Yelling when the ball went in their backyard.  Refusing to buy Girl Scout cookies, etc.  And, to add insult to injury, they were extremely non-plussed about the deck we put on the back of our house.

As a result, we essentially avoided them for fifteen years or so.  Oh sure, I would see them when I walked the dog and give a half-hearted wave.  But, truth be told, I never even knew their first names and I suspected they didn’t know mine.  With each trip around the sun, the relationship grew more and more distant.  Eventually, we barely acknowledged one another and settled into our own separate routines.  They might as well have lived in Idaho.

But that was before the puppy.  Just a couple of weeks ago, they brought home a cute golden doodle mix with a great personality.  As I headed out the door on my morning dog-walking routine, I was greeted by an unnaturally exuberant voice.  It was my neighbor.

“Hey Rob!  Have you met the newest addition to our family!” 

Um, first, how can you be so chipper at 6am?  And B, how did you know my name?

“I think our dogs are going to be fast friends!”

I couldn’t believe it.  She had transformed into a different person. “Baby talking” the puppy.  Asking me about my kids.   Commenting on how cute they were when we first moved in and how grown up they are now, etc.  I was having an out of body experience.

And just like that, I found myself getting to know and actually like this person whom I had convinced myself to ignore for so many years.  All because of the mutual ground established by a puppy.

And couldn’t we all benefit by finding mutual ground in our own lives.

Find That Olive Branch

Think about the strained relationships we have in our work lives. The shark co-worker who angled us out of a deal.  The boss who took credit for our solid idea.  The admin support who botched our big meeting.  We hold these offenses close and they grow and fester over time.  Maybe it is warranted.  Sometimes, we just run into bad people.  But not always.  Maybe that person had something deeper going on in their lives.  Maybe that person is sorry for what they did but too embarrassed to admit it.  Maybe we should seek some common ground and try to bridge the ever-widening gap.  It’s never too late.

And the same is true in our personal lives.  Money issues can strain a spousal relationship.  Discussions of parental care can turn emotional among the siblings.  Teenage angst can create a chasm between child and parent.  Left alone, these disagreements only deepen over time.  But when we strip everything away, most people are generally well-intentioned.  Most of us do not seek out strife and conflict.  Maybe it takes a more dramatic event to bring everyone together.  Maybe one person needs to reach out with an olive branch and find some common ground.

Resilience Thrives With Harmony

But we live in the real world.  There are people we simply cannot tolerate.  And sometimes that is warranted.  We don’t have to find common ground with toxic and self-focused people.  Sometimes, it is a best practice to actually widen the gap and flock to people who will always have our back. We don’t have to be best friends with everyone we meet.

But more often than not, our biases and first impressions are built on faulty logic.  When times turn difficult, we need all the help we can get to fuel our resilience.  We need to soften our hard outer shell and let more people into our lives.  Sometimes, people surprise us with their care.  Sometimes, people we never thought possible come through in the clutch.  Sometimes, we find unlikely allies in our darkest moments.

As we enter the Christmas season, it’s a perfect time to find common ground.  Maybe it is through an apology.  Or an acknowledgement.  Or a simple gift.  Or a shared passion.  Or maybe even through a cute, innocent puppy!

Resilience thrives when everyone is rowing in the same direction.  Sometimes, everybody just has to love everybody!