Love Them For Who They Are

 As I ponder relationships I've had in my life I'm often drawn to those people who I love and who mean more than the world to me and with whom I often have a lot of juvenile conflict.  I really cherish them.  I'm drawn over and over to the reminder that "we love people for who they are and not for who we want them to be."  I cherish relationships that aren't predicated on comity.  Anybody can hang around with people who don't rub you the wrong way - what's the trick in that? - but it's the people who can afford to ruffle your feathers, secure in the knowledge that the relationship is stronger than a minor disagreement that really teach us important lessons.  Don't get me wrong - I have an easy rapport with most of my friends and these guys and gals are easier to hang around with, but there is the occasional outlier and I love them just as much.

I have one buddy I've known since high school with whom I have a long standing bickering friendship.  We aren't arguing seriously about weighty topics, rather pissing and moaning about little, trivial matters.  And we have a deep and profound relationship, one where we can talk with each other about everything, sharing deeply personal things.  I believe that one of the problems is that we're both intensely competitive.  We hate to lose.  We hate to lose any argument so we tend to get our licks in.  We don't go down in the second round - we go the full fifteen.

I tell this story about my work life.  When I would lose a sale ninety percent of the time it was because of something internal to the company: no money, no management approval, some other piece of equipment worked better.  My commissions on these failures were zero.  The other ten percent of the time I lost to a company with a competitive product, also producing a zero commission.  These losses drove me crazy.  I was obsessed with them.  I studied the circumstances over and over, determined not to make the same mistake the next time even if I hadn't made a mistake.  With the rest of the losses I was cheerful and reflective.  It wasn't my fault.

The point is that both instances produced the same result.  One drove me crazy - one didn't.  Hate. To. Lose.  I hate to lose an argument over the best singles hitter in the American League in 1984 and I hate to lose a sale that took a nice chunk of money out of my pocket.

The other half of the equation is this sense that successful people are used to applying their talents to a problem and working through it to a conclusion of their liking.  My buddy is Uber-Talented and has a ton of achievements backing this up.  Where he struggles sometimes is with the quotidian tasks that we all face and this is where The Program has really filled my armory.  Trust me - I have no innate talent in acceptance and perspective on life matters but I've got 35 years of daily practice behind me and a whole army of A.A. friends and colleagues to help me along.  I am constantly reminded that all I can do is tell people what I've done and ask questions that might help them see an issue from a different point of view.

Beyond that?  None of my fucking business.