Tolerance

Okay an easy and thus potentially boring post. Let's be optimistic shall we and spice things up with an ANECDOTE!!!

So once riding shotgun in the car of a friend and boyfriend of a friend I overheard a semi-passive aggressive conversation/makings of an arguement. I being one of those blessed people whom know that people always want me to volunteer my opinion even when unasked for gave my friend (and friend's boyfriend) some advice on picking battles and giving feedback taken from management advice dispensed by manager-tools podcasts.

I recieved several opinions in return and some feedback on how relationships aren't management. To which their are many merits to this point - management is pretty unromantic, unexciting and rote. I would never advocate a relationship be 'managed' per se. Perhaps my mistake was in revealing my sources.

The manager-tools podcasts could be described by a pie-chart I can't be bothered drawing as consisting of 80% feedback the 'breakfast, lunch, dinner of champions' and given so much airplay I can't help but have the feedback model and 'behavioural' approach to relationships dominate my world view.

Why I offered the feedback model up as unsolicited advice was that it describes behaviour, and not attitudes, intentions etc. Thus it neatly removes 'judgement'.

Can you see yet, why I raise an anecdote about confusing management and relationships yet? Particularly in a post on the attractive quality of tolerance.

Early in my working suit days I had the revelation that the real first hurdle of 'management' was whether you could accept the notion that other people think differently than you do. Many are called managers in this sunburt country, few are. Again there's an importance in not confusing behaviour with titles.

And that's the essence of tolerance, it is being able to recognise that other people have different priorities, circumstances, beliefs etc and that its okay. I don't like going negative but it is easier to make a point of how unattractive intolerant people are by contrast though tolerance is a positive quality to be beheld.

One sure fire way to disenchant yourself to me is in how you treat the help, more so than any other situation that arises, when I witness people abusing a waiter (or if you are an intolerant person you may refer to this as making a 'resonable complaint') over some inconvenience I say 'never again' and have generally stuck to it. I am myself fairly non-confrontational in customer service situations, but people who abuse airline clerks, waiters, fast food employees and the like evoke a super un-sexy sense of entitlement and overinflated sense of self worth.

Intolerant people interpret slights against their honor and violations of their rights where there are none, and work up emotions in themselves that are unwarranted, who wants these people around when there is really bad news.

There is a stupidity to intolerance as well, they are the person who bleats out what we are all thinking, not in a courageous manner, but when we are stuck in line for hours feel the need to make a show of saying 'this is ridiculous'.

Enter the hero of this piece, the tolerant person. This person makes an effort to empathise, to understand and does not judge. They don't impose their internal reality on the external one. When the map doesn't match the ground, the map is wrong. These people you can productively have an argument with, because they are willing to accept that they don't know everything.

In practice tolerant people are incredibly hard to have an argument with, because they don't wrap their ego up in their position. They create a space for interpersonal movement, they remove conflict from your environment, it doesn't mean they are a pushover they just create a means by which you can give and recieve kindness.

Tolerant people are the people to go travelling with, they bend like a reed and don't snap like a twig. They can forgive a place for not meeting their expectations and go with it. They will try new dishes, eat with their hands, and take their shoes off in holy places, even if they are vested in not believing.

A tolerant person is an attractive employee, they are the ones who will notice that some folks are listeners and others are readers (think about whether your friends prefer phone calls generally or whether they prefer texts and emails) they will know that some people care about tasks and some people care about people. They will know some are boisterous and outgoing and some are reserved and observant. And they will accomodate all as much as they can.

I mean a relationship is not about 'settling' or compromise, nor should it be based on some kind of give-and-take power struggle. Like tolerance is not about overlooking the things that make somebody unpleasant to deal with. Tolerance needs it's limits, it is not passivity, it is not 'roll-over-and-tickle-my-belly' it is simply an expression of confidence that you don't need to defend and enforce your world view from a hostile world. It is a refusal to be hostile. A tolerant person generally I have observed won't tolerate intolerance. That is one battle they tend to pick.

Perhaps the best way to surmise the admirable and attractive trait of tolerance is to really look hard at the sentance: they have a sense of priorities.

That is tolerant people can sense others priorities. They will understand when somebody is berieved that that is the focus of their world, just as they won't cut in line because they can sense that everyone else has the same priority to get themselves served. Most importantly their sense of your priorities means they don't take things personally, even when they perhaps should.

Furthermore they have a sense of their own priorities. To the intolerant person I suspect their priorities are hard to rank. All priorities are one, a tolerant person can at least differentiate between their wants and needs. 'I would like the last piece of pizza but I don't really need it.'

Tolerance is subsequently easy to understand as an attractive quality in a manager, friend or partner - would you rather choose to spend time with somebody who knows they want you or with somebody who thinks they need you?