July 30th, 2009
Part III The Soup Pot and the Soup in the Pot
You think because you understand one, you must understand two, because one and one makes two. But you also must understand and.
-Sufi saying
Social beings we are.
In the first post of this series, I presented the idea that there are two forces present in every interaction and relationship between human beings; difference and commonality. In the second post, I presented the idea that difference and commonality are not independent of each other, but rather complimentary opposites forming a greater whole. In this post, I will try to begin exploring how to use both the difference and commonality between us to foster relationships that are authentic and generative.
I do not know for sure whether this is a metaphor or an analogy or something else, but an abstraction that helps me appreciate the role of difference and commonality is making soup.
The soup pot represents what we have in common with another person or a group of people, it is what holds us together. The soup ingredients that we put in the pot represent our differences. The pot needs to be sound enough for us to fill it up and apply heat (through working together and communicating) so that we can explore our differences (the ingredients inside). If the soup pot is not sound (if we have not established our commonality) we cannot apply much heat and will remain divided by our differences…imagine applying heat to a styrofoam cup…it would fall apart pretty quickly.
Applying this to a group of people that work together, some of the commonality that we would want to focus on before we focus on differences would be:
- Why we came to work here
- What the mission, vision, core values of the organization mean to us
- What is important to us in a work environment / team culture
These types of questions bring some deeply held and shared values to the surface, and help us begin building a strong container. Once we have done that we are better able to examine our differences in a healthy and functional manner, whether that be about different experiences and perspectives due to our social identities (race, gender, orientation, etc.) or whether it is cognitive, behavioral, prioritization or other differences that we want to address or learn from.
So. Think of a couple of people that you have difficult relationships with. Pick one of them to have an intentional conversation with sometime in the next week. Do your best to make that conversation about things that you have in common or agree on. Chances are that if you start building a container based on commonality you will be better able to work with the differences inside.
Be good to each other.