Shari Della Penna
  • Home
  • About
    • My family
    • My work
    • My favorites
    • FAQ's
  • Contact
  • Blog

"Small acts of kindness can change and humanise our world."
   Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 1948-2020
   ​Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, 1991-2020
                         Author, Advocate, Advisor

The Art of the Compromise

1/29/2019

0 Comments

 
    “I know you don’t like me,” I say. “But you don’t have to. This is business.” I try to sound like one of the residents.
    “Too busy,” he repeats. But I hear the tiniest break between the two words. He is listening to me.
    “Never mind,” I say. I take one step back from the table.
    “Hold on,” he says. “I happen to want something from the outside. I’ll take it as payment if you can get it.”
                           from All Rise for the Honorable Perry T. Cook
                                                      written by Leslie Connor
                                   Kathrine Tegen Books/HarperCollins, 2016

    “What do you want?” was a question put to me many years ago. “What do you mean?” was my pathetic answer. I really didn’t understand the question. I have since learned that it is not only okay to want (non-material and material) stuff, it is totally necessary to know my “wants” in order to create a definition of my Self. Only then can I turn my wants and needs into actionable goals. I can prioritize my lists accordingly.
    Making decisions based solely on what I want, though, is usually self-serving. And deciding on something solely to please others is usually self-defeating. 
    Seems like everyone is born somewhere on the stiffer/caver spectrum. Some people are stiff: stubborn, unyielding. Some people cave in to the wishes of others without a second thought. Neither extreme is particularly useful to individuals or societies.
    We, as individuals and as a society, need a middle ground. We need to consider others without losing ourselves. We need to learn to compromise.
    A compromise is a situation in which people accept something slightly different from what they really want, because they are considering the wishes of other people [to achieve a greater good.] www.collinsdictionary.com (bracketed words are mine)
    Compromise is art. It is recognizing that even though an observation may have been made correctly, sometimes “right” is not “good.” And most of the time several definitions of “right” exist side by side, anyway. 
    Our very definition of compromise is giving up something to get something better. Instead of adversaries grasping a perceived “rightness,” compromisers become partners for the greater good.
    And the question remains: How to consider the needs of others without being consumed by their otherness.
    And how on earth can our leaders make a compromise that keeps us safe without incurring the wrath of one group or another? A wrath born of fear and hatred and fomented to a frenzy with lies, but a wrath nonetheless. 
    And of course a particular wall is on my mind. Who really wants that wall? Is is merely a “want” or is it a true “need”?    
    In “Mending Wall” Robert Frost’s narrator declares:
        Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
        If I could put a notion in [my neighbor’s] head:
        "Why do [walls] make good neighbours? Isn't it
        Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
        Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
        What I was walling in or walling out,
        And to whom I was like to give offence. (sic)
    So do cows mean “danger”? Because they are “other”? Because they will eat my grass and  stomp all over my fields?
    According to Frost’s narrator, building walls is 
        Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
        One on a side. It comes to little more:
        There where it is we do not need the wall:
        He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
        My apple trees will never get across
        And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
        He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours.”
    Certainly, the United States is a sovereign nation whose borders must be protected from criminals and those who do harm one way or another. Our government has the obligation to keep us safe. But not all pines are prickly and not all apples are wholesome.
    There are many ways to accomplish this safety. We have all heard what they are. 
    Before we allow our leader to take drastic steps to make his dream come true, we need to encourage him to build a bridge to compromise. I fear this will be a very long process, if it will even happen at all. 
    There is no shame in admitting a mistake and correcting it. The shame comes in declaring that no mistake, misjudgment, manipulation of facts was made in the first place. 
    Back to Robert Frost.
        [My neighbor] moves in darkness as it seems to me,
        Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
        He will not go behind his father's saying,
        And he likes having thought of it so well
        He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours.”
    I tend to agree with Frost's narrator who says, “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall.”
                                          -—stay curious! (and compassionate)


0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

         I'm a children's writer and poet intent on observing the world and nurturing those I find in my small space .

    Archives

    May 2025
    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    October 2024
    September 2024
    August 2024
    July 2024
    June 2024
    May 2024
    April 2024
    March 2024
    February 2024
    January 2024
    December 2023
    November 2023
    October 2023
    September 2023
    August 2023
    July 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    April 2023
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly