Differentiation Strategy

#191: What's the Diff?

"He who is different from me does not impoverish me - he enriches me."
From Flight to Arras by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

How do you feel about this line?

I used to carry this notion of "birds of the same feather, flock together" as being more viable in the long term than "opposites attract." While there may be chemistry resulting from polarity, it makes you wonder how long the reaction will last and if it will be 1.) sustainable and 2.) binding. Now I am not a chemistry guru. Far from it. I almost died in my Chemistry class in high school (which my mom will find horrific since she's a Chemical Engineer.) But I've always been cynical about such matches. It had always been more conceivable for me to be with someone who walked like me, talked like me, liked the same books, music, activities. It's like having me - guy version. Now, this is not narcissistic. It's more of being myopic. And lazy.

See, the Lord created man and woman to complement each other. Not to duplicate each other. God could have made Adam and Adam2. Or even Adam and Steve. But in His infinite wisdom, He created Adam and Eve. There will necessarily be differences. In various degrees. I may have been short-sighted in thinking that minimization of differences (or what business school students love to call 'variability') automatically results in operational efficiencies. But I am now learning with each day that complementarity is an attractive concept... and one that has promise of being long-term. For when and where one is weak, the other can be strong.

When I was 15, I wrote an essay about this - exactly about this - for our Christian Values class in High School. I got an A+ for it. Apparently, the lesson does not end with the receipt of the grade. More than a decade after, I find myself doing the practicum.