If the Shoe Fits: Relationships
by Miki SaxonA Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
The article accompanying this post may surprise you, but it gets my point across with eloquence.
And while it talks about a romantic relationship the lessons in it apply to all human interactions for they are all relationships.
It’s a woman’s story about two very different romantic relationships and a pet tortoise named Minnie that turned out to be male.
Her first lover became her ex lover because he wanted/needed/expected/demanded/ she be something she wasn’t.
I didn’t want to be in a relationship again where someone wanted me to pretzel myself into someone I wasn’t. “You’re odd,” my ex had told me. “All you want to do is watch movies, read books and play with Minnie.” He meant it as a rebuke, but I kept thinking: what was wrong with that kind of nirvana?
Her second lover, who became her husband, had a different attitude towards her oddness and towards Minnie.
Where my old boyfriend told me how obsessive I was about Minnie, Jeff celebrated our connection, making a fake newspaper cover featuring Minnie and me.
When Minnie finally died many of the author’s connections (including her mother) couldn’t understand her grief—after all, it was just a reptile.
People told me about their dogs and cats who had died, and I thought, it’s easy to love the beautiful, the normal. But what about the gifts of loving the strange, the uncommon, the odd?
Bosses tend to hire people they think are like themselves and get upset when they find out they are actually different—strange, uncommon, odd—and when that happens they would do well to remember the lesson of the porcupines.
Better yet, remember the story of Minnie, because your relationships with your people are the secret sauce that will make you and your company a success—or not.
A strange little figure. Uncommon. Odd. And completely and always beloved.
Image credit: HikingArtist
