"It must be hard to be a man, too," she says. "Mr. Draper, I don't know what it is you really believe in. But I do know what it feels like to be out of place. To be disconnected. To see the whole world laid out in front of you the way other people live it. There is something about you that tells me you know it too."She is a character on the TV show Mad Men. She is not the prototypical woman for the period (I think the show is set in the fifties.)
She is pretty hardcore but in a informal meeting with Don Draper, she comes to appreciate her "unique" struggles aren't really unique.
And coming to that realization seems to sell her on a business relationship with Sterling Cooper.
Un-unique struggles lead to unique connections.
I've often heard if we are going to connect, it'll be through our similarities or "common ground". We won't likely build a relationship on our differences.
Somehow being able to see that the person sitting across from the table, though so very different, struggles with the same things we do often leads to a connection.
It leads to a willingness to do business together.
What brings us together isn't our differences.
But it isn't our shared strengths or our alike-ness. Necessarily.
It's our common struggles.
And not just our common struggles.
Our ability to identify the struggle in another as the struggle within us.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Or is likely to become so.
2 comments:
"It's our common struggles," that unite us. Beautiful and true.
It seems it's our common ambitions, as well. If we're struggling toward similar goals in the world, there's strength in numbers. And there's a comfort in a shared struggle, like that we see between "bands of brothers" in war.
The "common struggle" and "common ambition" is what's called a social object...a "thing" that starts a conversation and binds us together.
It seems the thing that makes a social object a social object is its ability to impact. And it could be favorable or unfavorable. But it has impact. It seems I err on the side of not having impact and therefore don't create or identify social objects to the degree I hanker for.
It's kind of like art in a sense. We're all artist if we are willing to allow ourselves an impact.
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