In 1972 Stealers Wheel’s Gerry Rafferty and Joe Egan wrote, “Stuck
in the Middle with You.” In an interview
with the Daily Telegraph, claimed the song was a parody of Bob Dylan paranoia. The course says, “clowns to the left of me,
jokers to the right, (but) here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”
The song points out how they had found the exact right spot,
and everybody else was wrong. Good for
them.
In the 1980s, Jerry Seinfeld had a bit in his stand up
routine, pointing out how, when you are driving, you consider anybody who
drives faster than you to be a maniac, but you think anybody who drives slower
than you to be an idiot.
Since being enlighted by Jerry, I have noticed his comments hit
the mark. It seems all of us believe the
speed demons who pass us on the highways of the world will cause people to be
injured or die as a result of their recklessness. At the same time, we all know the slowpokes
produce numerous needless crashes as we all slam on our breaks to compensate
for their traffic clogging over cautiousness.
I believe I have found the exact right speed to drive. It maximizes the speed and safety of civic
society to coexist and prosper alongside each other. Please set your cruise control to the exact
level of my Tahoe.
The world is moving into a phase—one with masks. Or maybe one without masks.
Modern COVID-19 times have many people applying the logic of
faster/slower cars on the road to other people’s approaches to our current situation.
At times you are made to feel you want people to die if you
skip wearing a mask or open your business.
While others see people with masks and assume they don’t care about the job
loss, or that our government is taking away our civil liberties.
The situation is obviously much more complicated than the
paragraph above. But it is a world with fistfights breaking out because people are
told to put on a mask or because they are choosing not to wear a mask.
We tend to give ourselves more credit for being more righteous
than our fellow man, while at the same time judging others as reckless because
they aren’t complying with our standards.
Malcolm Gladwell’s recent book “Talking to Strangers” does a
great job of helping us sort through our current situation. “Talking to Strangers” lays out the case for
understanding others before jumping to conclusions about their actions. Understanding where people are coming from
helps us understand why they are taking the path they are taking.
I recently served on a panel with a speaker who referred to assuming
positive intent as a critical point in all of her interactions. At Willmar Electric, we agree wholeheartedly
with this concept. It is why we made it
an underlining assumption within our company’s published “Meeting Code of
Conduct.”
Seinfeld can’t use my example because it would get him booed
off the stage. But most COVD-19 rants make me think of his routine from over 30
years ago. Thirty years from now, I’m
sure we will still have issues where each of us believes we have found the
perfect balance between the maniacs and the idiots.
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