Guidepost Ten: The Power of Attraction (Aka Episode 53)
A Whackadoodle discussion in which my student askes a question for which I may not have the right answer, but it has few funny stories and a great parody at the end.
“I know this week is about the Power of Attraction,” she said. “But what do you do about people who do not attract you? How do you handle people who actually repulse you?”
“Repulse?” I looked up worried. “That’s a strong word.”
“But isn’t repulsive the opposite of attractive?”
“Yeah, I suppose it is.”
“So, isn’t it the right word to use if I am asking about the opposite of attraction?”
I sighed and got ready for a longer lesson. “Attraction has degrees. Repulsive has degrees. What exactly are you talking about?”
“I want to know what you do when people say or do things that repulse you? I mean things that you have a gut reaction to. Things that make you want to shout, or scream, or punch?”
“Are you talking about someone who might be dangerous of violent? Because if that’s the case, it’s time to get out.”
“No, not dangerous. Just so annoying you want to hit them.”
“If that is the case, I’ve found that sometimes you just have to accept people as they are if you want to work with them, although there are tools to help make working with them easier.”
I began to say more when she interrupted, “Yeah, yeah, I remember your articles on dealing with the terrible ten behavioral types, on setting boundaries, on working with the different personality types. But what if none of those tools work? What if the person is just so sure that their way is right and your way is wrong that they never bother to listen to you; and when you do try to say something, they get all offended?”
It took me a long time to take her question in. I finally came up with, “Well, I have been known to sometimes resort to humor. It’s usually better than punching someone in the face, and humor has a way of teaching that anger seldom has.”
“How do you mean?”
I sought my mind for an example. “Well, there was this one guy who later became my sister’s second divorce. I never really liked him. I didn’t feel a repulsion like you’re talking about. It was just a vague feeling of dislike. Most of the time, I just ignored everything he said. After all, he wasn’t my fiancé. But one day, he started insisted that I had to be six-foot-two-inches tall because I was two inches taller than him, and he was six foot. It really irked me because it felt like he was calling me a liar.” I started to laugh at the memory. “I didn’t bother to argue because I knew he wouldn’t respect the opinion of a mere girl, so I just went to my mom’s sewing basket, got out a measuring tape, and asked if he would like to measure me.”
“Dang, did he accept?”
“No, but it shut him up for a while. And there was this other time that I’ll never forget. He and my sister were sitting at this very dinning table, and my friend and I were sitting on the stools right over there. I don’t quite remember how the subject of marriage came up, but I remember saying that I didn’t think I would ever get married because…I was about to explain that it would take the right guy, when he interrupted. ‘But you have to get married! It’s the duty of every woman to get married and have children.’ I guess I’d had enough of his unwanted advice, so I looked him in the eye and said as sincerely as I could, ‘Oh, I plan on having lots of kids, I just don’t plan on getting married.’ His face was so shocked that my friend nearly bust a gut trying to keep from laughing, and I don’t remember my sister’s fiancé ever offering me advice again. In fact, I think he barely ever spoke to me again.”
She watched me laugh at the memory, then asked, “But what if you needed him to talk with you? What if you had to work with him?”
I stopped laughing, “So you’re asking about needing to work with someone you dislike and might even disrespect, or distrust, because you have to achieve something with that person?”
“Yeah!”
“Well, if it’s distrust, you might have to record and check everything they do and say; if it’s dislike or disrespect, you might have to just get over it, accept who they are, and learn to focus on whatever goals you may have in common.”
“How do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve often worked with people I don’t care for, so I focus on getting the job done. What is my responsibility here? How can I best facilitate it? How can I keep myself civil? How can I be more accepting of another person’s quirks and beliefs because, after all, we have a common goal?”
“But what if we don’t have a common goal.”
“There’s always a common goal,” I snorted. “Even Iran and Israel have a common goal. You might just have to look for it.”
“I thought Iran wants to wipe Israel off the map. What common goals do they have?”
“I don’t think either of them really wants to start World War III. I doubt even Putin wants to start World War III. That might be a place to start, and then you work backwards from there. Basically, it’s about focusing on what you can do rather bemoaning all the things you can’t do.”
“Humm,” she sounded uncertain. “I am gonna have to think about that.”
“Well, while you’re thinking about it, why don’t I also give you a quote from Salman Rushdie to think about.”
“Who’s Salman Rushdie?”
“He wrote a satirical book called The Satanic Verses that made a lot of people angry, and at least one of them angry enough to attempt to kill him. He was was on The Late Show with Stephan Colbert the other night, and he made the most amazing statement. He said, ‘The threat against my book was a quarrel between those with a sense of humor, and those without one…(he tried) to kill me because (he didn’t) know how to laugh.’ It got me thinking that a lot people get angry because they lack a sense of humor about one subject or another. They start to take a lot of things too seriously, and other things not seriously enough. It’s easy to get distracted.”
“What exactly is satire?”
“Rather than explain it, let me find you an example.” I said, and I did, except it’s kind of a parody/satire.
“What’s the difference between parody and satire?” you might ask.
That might be another episode. The one when I tell you about the time I got hired as telephone psychic. Spoiler alert: I did it for a friend to show her she could just come to me instead of paying $3.50 a minute to talk to a stranger. Meanwhile enjoy the parody: