The Simultaneous Factor
If there is anything I have learned from my interest in energy it is this- many things are able to co-exist simultaneously. And very often the things that exist side by side are polar opposites, or are hard to explain.
I first noticed this several years ago while eating in one of my favorite Italian restaurants. This is a “family style” Italian restaurant located in Queens, near Kennedy airport.
This restaurant has been around forever, and I can remember many family dinners of culinary contentment spent there. Think dishes like baked clams, chicken scapariella, peppers and onions, spaghetti with clam sauce, house red wine, and you have the picture. But there was one factor that always puzzled me: In an otherwise fantastic meal of authentic Italian comfort food, why was the bread so ordinary? How could the owners NOT know this? I received my answer a few years ago, and I never would have been able to figure it out. This restaurant gets its bread from the widow of one of the former owners. Even though the owners know the bread could be better, they stick with this agreement, and the results: mediocre bread in an otherwise great restaurant.
I’ve noticed this factor at work in friendships and other personal relationships too. When we allow ourselves to open up and get close to someone, we can experience all kinds of pleasures: physical intimacy, emotional harmony, intellectual stimulation, etc. These experiences compose some of the basic benefits we can enjoy as human beings, and they should be celebrated. And we stick with these relationships and allow our vulnerability to continue because of the warm feelings these experiences generate. Those same relationships that engender such positive feelings in us can also morph into the source of the most pain. And the transformation can come in an instant. It’s as if these same feelings-pleasure and pain- existed simultaneously on a certain plane. And by a single gesture, or on their own, these feelings can change right before our eyes. And there is almost nothing we can do about these changes-except to accept them and act accordingly.
The same thing can be true for our investments and our work life. We can be in a great situation at work where opportunities are coming our way, a supportive environment exists, and we feel happy to go to work every day. And then something happens…but that something was also present when we thought everything was “fine.” But we weren’t aware of it; even though on some level it existed at the same time as our “happiness.”
It can be very helpful to acknowledge that seemingly “opposite” situations can exist simultaneously. We are less surprised when things flip, and with practice, we might even be able to head them off with our own actions.
