Imagine that you are stuck on an island with only a handful of other people. ![[image of guy alone on an island]](http://www.blakejennelle.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/guy-alone-on-an-island2.jpg "[image of guy alone on an island]")
These people are very different from you. And you don’t like some of them.
Maybe their names are Gilligan, Mary Ann and the Skipper. Or maybe they are your boss, your competitor, the loudmouth who hogs all the credit and your ex-friend who gossips about you behind your back.
Sure, you don’t have to get along with them. You can choose to avoid one, not talk to another and form an alliance with whoever feels the same way.
But it’s going to make life on that little island lonely and complicated. More importantly, it’s going to be hard to get the things you need.
Because the loudmouth knows how to waterproof your hut. The competitor knows how to find water when it hasn’t rained in weeks. And your ex-friend has the savvy to rally the other two to help.
We all live on islands. Some seem large — places like Philly or Manhattan or Hong Kong. But we won’t ever interact with 99.99% of those people in a meaningful way.
Our real islands are much smaller. Our family of five. Our team of eight at work. The fifteen guests at our dinner party. The four officers of our club.
Some of these people suck. They can be thoughtless and annoying and petty. Some are downright malicious.
But they can also be helpful. They know things we don’t know. They have resources we don’t have. They know people we’d like to meet.
We can choose not to get along with them. And it might feel good for a while.
But eventually it catches up with us. We don’t get the help we need. We alienate good people because they are friends with our enemies. We exhaust ourselves with awkward encounters and negative energy.
On our little islands, we have choices everyday about how we deal with the little people.
We can choose to get along with them. Or we can become one of them.
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