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Home
and Family
Common Thread
by Rosally Saltsman
I had the displeasure of witnessing a meeting between my
landlord, their previous tenant, both sides' lawyers and a
court-appointed appraiser. I had to witness it because it was
taking place in my apartment. Having no choice and having
finished straightening up, reading the paper and saying
Tehillim, I observed the proceedings from my perch on the
living room couch. It was sort of like watching a play, a
drama unfolding, conflict, spicy dialogue, angst,
recriminations.
Then something interesting happened. One of the lawyers said
to the other, "I've been a lawyer a lot longer than you
have," to prove his superior legal acumen. The other lawyer
out of curiosity asked when he had received his license. They
exchanged license numbers. They had received them at the same
time. A chuckle broke the tension, they had something in
common, they were on opposing sides but they had entered the
brotherhood of lawyers together. Aspersions faded into casual
banter about what yeshivahs their children were attending and
banal conversation replaced open hostilities while the
appraiser finished his appraising.
What causes bad feeling among people, not limited to those on
opposite sides of a courtroom, is the feeling that there is
nothing connecting us to the people with whom we come into
conflict. However, our feelings change immediately if we
realize that the person with whom we are in conflict is our
neighbor or the friend of a friend. Any connection, no matter
how tenuous, changes our perspective about our confreres, in
even an unpleasant situation, and makes us more disposed to
act charitable, even friendly, towards them.
We all seek commonality, understanding, connection. We feel
more secure being in the same boat, from the same town, with
the same points of reference, speaking the same figurative
language. Finding the common thread was one of the tools
espoused as a means of winning friends and influencing people
by the guru of getting along with others, Dale Carnegie. But
long before him, the Torah espoused the Golden Rule —
to Love Your Neighbor as Yourself. As the dictum intimates, a
good way to love another person is to see him as yourself.
The more we can do that, the more we realize how similar we
are, the easier it is to love them because the more they are
like ourselves.
So, when in conflict, we need to head for the higher ground
of common ground and we won't run aground on the shores of
unfamiliar territory on the grounds of irreconcilable
differences. When we authenticate membership in the club we
both belong to, whether we're lawyers, teachers, mothers,
Rabbis, Jews or simply human beings, we can always go on to
find more to agree on.
Don't you agree?
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