From: Steve & Oxsana Marquis (marquis@nccn.net)
Date: Wed Apr 20 2005 - 23:48:27 BST
Robin wrote:
___________________
To see things in a different perspective I'll first change your "aimless
spontaneity" to a "static meeting pattern" The next thing would be to see
how you and your friend value that pattern.
From your post I think its safe to say that you value the pattern low, while
your friend values the pattern higher. In this valuing there is no such
thing as right or wrong, and by simply stating this your friends feelings
would not need to be hurt since it is simply a difference in valuing a
static pattern.
From here a possible way out is to actually figure out what the reasons are
why you value the pattern high and why he values it high. Somewhere a long
that path may lie understanding and perhaps a compromise.
The possible reason for the friendship being off-track might be because
instead of talking about a difference in valuing something it was tried to
be about a higher morale beeing in a certain social pattern.
___________________
Hi Robin and thanks for your feedback.
Like in Wim's reply I am slightly confused. The 'static meeting pattern'
you suggested I look at does sound how things were and how my friend would
describe them ('static' in this sense conotates boring and not frequent
enough). So, if this is what you are alluding to I would value this old
pattern highly and my friend not so high. And we could look at the reasons.
His preference was dropping in on the weekends w/o calling etc, but in the
middle of a kitchen remodel this is a time I wanted for projects. So, right
now I value weekends free of social obligation highly and he values
socializing highly. And we could look at the reasons.
Sitting down and listing it like this I'm sure it is possible to find a
compromise on this particular issue (meet on weekday evenings, etc). This
is how negotiating is done. Find common patterns of value and structure the
relationship around those.
But the aimless spontaneity I am referring to in my post however has nothing
o do with how often we get together, planned or otherwise. This was a
criticism on my part of uncritically accepting DQ as moral license for
aimless behavior in all aspects of his life. My friend was quite proud of
his spontaneous dynamic contrary style, taking the moral high ground. My
criticism just popped the bubble I suppose, and I was suggesting the rest of
this mess is at least partly repercussions of that. One tends to lash out
when one's feelings are hurt. Anything I do, negotiating, apologizing, etc,
at this point does not seem to heal what looks like a deep hurt. So, I am
just waiting things out.
Maybe what you are suggesting, Robin, is to disassociate 'meeting patterns'
from spontaneity in general and work on smaller resolvable differences
first. But this will not undo hurt feelings I am afraid. There is a loss
process to go through.
It is quite clear that we need to suspend judgment of the value systems of
others most of the time. We can function quite well under several different
value systems, a lesson from the 'multiple truth' aspect of MOQ. But, as
you get closer to someone, small differences in value become larger and this
task becomes more difficult. Secondly, if a high quality friendship is to
be one that wishes the best for the other, that actively encourages growth
in the other, this does require some license for questioning the validities
of each other's values to some degree at some point. Don't have the answer.
Live well,
Steve
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archives:
Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Apr 20 2005 - 23:54:01 BST