A couple weeks ago a couple of friends invited me over for dinner. I went to the living room to say hi to their four year old. He must had learned the parts of the body, or perhaps better said, discovered his own body recently because he was very excited to show me the different parts of it’s different parts. He quickly showed me his ankles, his knees, his arms his wrists and then pulled down his pants and innocently pointed to his little penis. “What are you doing?” I asked in reaction mode as I was gotten by surprise. Then I caught myself about to tell him that he shouldn’t do that, but instead of doing so I thought to myself: “no, it wont be me the person who is going to make him feel awkward about his sexual organs and treat differently than the rest of his body at this age. It wont be me, and ideally it won’t be anyone else either”. I wish that this little kid -and all the kids in the world- never feels any taboos about his sexual organs and when he grows up he is able to have wonderful natural sex as if he was a wild stallion.
The other day I watched for the second time Departures, the Japanese 2008 Foreign Film Oscar Winning Movie. It’s my favorite movie of the last 15 years. The movie is about death, resentment, beauty, forgiveness, how random (spelling) accidents can change our lives and these 2 more things:
1. Shame and fear: The main character discovers a gift working as the person who prepares a dead corpse before being buried or cremated by cleaning up the corpse and making it look as beautiful as the living person ever looked. This is considered an embarrassing job in Japan and the main character “has no choice” but to shamefully hiding it from everyone, including his wife.
2. Conscientiousness and Truth: The quality of the care, attention, sensibility, conscientiousness and love that the main character puts into his work makes the audience completely forget about the negative perceptions one may have about the job. If anything, the negative judgments we may have about the job make the dedication he puts into it more admirable. The “how he is doing it” completely sweeps away the “what he is doing”.
But above all, if this movie was about one thing, it would be about number 2 (Truth) winning over number 1 (Fear).
I have spent over 6 weeks negotiating with a potential partner for my start up. After 4 weeks we agreed verbally. Then he sent me a written draft to which I didn’t agree as out of no-where, some new points had been added to the agreement and some other important points had gone missing. I made my edits and sent it back. Then I went to meet him trusting that we would come to a final agreement as we both really saw the opportunity of working together. He was passionate about what I did and I could use some help to lift this company off the ground. Instead of having a respectful open discussion with both parties trying to understand each other and bridge positions he tried to make me sign to his draft through intimidating, blackmailing, belittling and me. I left the meeting feeling the deal was broken. He emailed me the following day with a manipulative email for me to agree to his draft again. I responded, no adult had ever talked to me like that and respect goes first no matter how much money I’m leaving on the table. If he doesn’t apologize the agreement is over.
My advisors are clearly telling me to walk away from this guy but I can still see my mind thinking “well this guy could do this for my company”. What I also do is see this voice not coming from a place of abundance. This is a needy voice for which it’s okay to compromise on self respect for the sake of business. I can also see how this voice leaves a door open “well, if he apologizes…”
I aspire to have a generous heart and therefore don’t want to operate from resentment. However, I am not going to be a “victim” that goes back to his aggressor rationalizing to myself that there could be some potential benefits.
That’s why today I am really happy and proud of myself, because I can see how I’m letting go of this agreement, trusting in myself and changing how I operate. I’m starting to put self-respect first.
Plus my company is not where I’d like it to be, but at least there is one thing I will be able to chose as an entrepreneur, to work with people whose values I look up to. Bullying is not one of them. Kindness is.
Blossomy Happy Sunday night.