From an SMS Circa 2008 - To Current Affairs

"There are times when I wish that I was limited to certain emotions... So that I'll never have to experience pain, never feel betrayed or disappointed, and never get my fragile heart broken... But the same thing means that I'll never know how it feels to love and be loved in return... The thought of it kinda scares me... To have a heart that's whole but numb... Or a heart that's broken but real... Good night!"

This exact SMS message was sent from a red-haired wizard's cellphone to a hopeless romantic at exactly 21:25:10 11/15/2008.

To love or not to love -- that is NOT the question. Love is always (and should be) the answer to life's biggest questions; not to love is always a convenient way for excusing one's self and saying "I do not like thee".

Liking should not be a prerequisite to loving -- it is possible to love everybody, without liking everybody. In fact, because of human nature, there is always the possibility of either mutual or one-sided dislike between two honest and trustworthy persons.

Given that, I propose, as had always been documented in every team-building activity, that we, as truth-seeking and caring individuals:

1. Seek to understand one another, before we expect that we be understood. Know the other's strengths and weaknesses. Give due recognition and praise for the strengths (e.g. a job well done is a job well done). Accept the weaknesses as they are and attempt to transform them into eventual strengths (e.g. too much focus on a single task to the detriment of other equally important works -- assign this person to working on challenging tasks one at a time).

2. In case of mutual and honest disagreements, at least one person must eventually "give in". "We cannot agree to disagree, unless at least one of us is not an honest truthseeker." Seek to adjust one's self to minimally conform to another's standards, without sacrificing one's principles and values. If it would be the other way around, each person in your entire community would be exerting effort to adjust to you, whereas doing as proposed would maximize your "personal socioeconomic utility". (Hint: Google "Economist's Golden Rule - EGR".)

3. In real life, we may actually "agree to disagree". Take for an example the question of the existence of God. Theists, atheists, and agnostics take (almost) mutually exclusive positions in answering this daunting question. Over the decades, they have "agreed to disagree". Here is where respect for diversity comes in.

I guess, if each human being on planet Earth would subscribe to the principles in points 1 through 3, the world would be a whole lot better place to live in. And I would typically take that to be an understatement.