The Fighting Philosophers

Listening to: I’m Walking Away – Craig David (A coincidence, I swear! Not walking away from anything.)

Mood: In a serious procrastination funk. I have family coming over tomorrow and I’m pulling an ostrich

I got to talking to the hubby the other day about a health initiative in his company to get people talking about seeing health care providers to get checkups. To be sure, I have no part in corporate anything. I work but I’m a contractor, so the only office politics I have to deal with are my own. When my husband was telling me about this initiative my nose immediately wrinkled up in distaste. Why would a company care at all if people saw a doctor. I’m not talking about caring about their bottom line if employees are ill, I’m talking about actually caring as this was how it was being passed off as. My dear husband argued that the company did care about people. My husband is a corporate suit (and I love him for it), so he kind of has to drink the Kool-aid, for which I tease him on a regular basis. I called bull. We had a very spirited discussion about corporate motivations and being aware of others’ motivations. It later morphed into a discussion on social responsibilities.

I love having these chats with my husband. He is one of the very few people that I can have adult type intelligent conversations. We can disagree without anything being thrown, even though our views on things are quite often opposite. I am constantly reminded that my husband and I see eye to eye on many practical things like child raising, money, etc. Once we get into theoretical and philosophical territory, we couldn’t be more different on many, many things.

During our conversation, my husband looked at me in surprise and said that he couldn’t believe how much of a cynic I was. I looked back in equal surprise and wondered how we had been married for this long without that being glaringly obvious. I do believe I was born a cynic who grew into a realist. I replied back that I couldn’t believe that for an educated realist, he wasn’t more of a cynic. In this case ladies and gentlemen, a half empty glass on one side and a half full one on the other doesn’t equal a balance.

I’m glad we can have these discussions, even though the only things we walk away with are a better understanding of each other and the pleasure of having a good brisk discussion.  I always feel blessed when I’m reminded that I have a husband who respects me for who I am (well, most of the time anyways!) and that encourages me to always be better.

How do you deal with these kind of differences? Ignore them? Have rousing fights where you’re both throwing things and yelling? Discuss calmly and academically? Tell me, I’d love to hear your stories.

Becky