We Can Get Along With Anybody
Is it really that hard?
What gets in the way of getting along? I can think of many excuses, because they are excuses, not reasons.
Someone did something to you that hurt you so you end up harboring a grudge. This is like adding another piece of unwanted baggage to your life, it bugs you over and over, but the other person either does not realize they hurt you or have long forgotten about it.
Political differences and lack of tolerance or even listening. I remember the age of intense but well-mannered discourse between people of difficult political persuasions. We might ended up agreeing to disagree but we did not heed any call to use violence against our own and our government by the thousands in person and probably by the millions seething with the desire to do harm...
Religious differences and the lack of tolerance. Being an amateur theologian (this is the absolute worst kind of theologian!) I’ve read the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita (The Song of God) a Hindu ‘hymn’ written approximately 700 B.C. detailing the path of a good and moral life. I searched for common ground and like Thomas Merton and the Dali Lama – found we have much!! The fact that leaders of religions chose weaponization of their faith and instilled it in their followers does not dispel the fact that we DO HAVE COMMON GROUND. It is not the ‘belief’, it is the distortion of such beliefs by those who lead, that create such turmoil, violence, torture and death. Whew!
These are just a few examples. So what do we do to ‘get along’? Long ago by Dad told me ‘an ounce of honey draws more flies than a barrel of vinegar’. It sunk in. All it involves is being nice to another one of us created in His Image and Likeness. I still play ‘the game’ of how many people I can make laugh during the day. Started it long ago as practice for keeping rule number two; love each other as I have loved you. Practice DOES make perfect – eventually!
Used to keep track of how many; now I just try it on everybody. Sometimes you run into a person you see often at some place like the local grocery store who you just can’t ‘crack’. This is where persistence comes in. I almost always get them in the end. After all, humor is the best medicine. There may be one or two out there I could not get to smile, much less laugh, over the past couple of decades.
One of my opening one liners that almost always gets a laugh is on Monday’s is when I say to the person, “Happy Monday! The ultimate oxymoron!”
Or I love it when you greet someone in the ‘service industry’ and they ask the proverbial, “How you today?”
And I answer, “I think I am spectacular, or maybe I have to settle for excellent. This makes me confused as to which, so I go for both and remain confused. Confusion if you just let it be is really not all that bad.”
This almost always gets several laughs and even better a conversation about how the other person is doing.
We all can get along. We just have to follow two simple rules….
Love Him Who made us and everything else in great gratitude
Love everybody created in His Image and Likeness and treat them like you want to be treated, with care, decency and love
Woman or man, is it that hard??
Clement
fishtownproductions.com… clementcharles.org… clementcharles.substack.com