Saarinen’s Gateway Arch is a structure that combines both strength and flexibility. It is resilient, but not stubbornly so.
The Gateway Arch provides a nice metaphor for business disputes… and for those who don’t like metaphors, perhaps this ancient proverb will suffice:
Let a person always bend like a reed and not be hard like a cedar:
A reed grows in the water, its stem is flexible, and its roots are many.
All the winds in the world cannot uproot it, for it sways back and forth with them.
And when the winds cease to blow, the reed is still standing in its place.A cedar does not grow in water, its trunk is not flexible, and its roots are few.
All the winds in the world cannot uproot it, but when a southerly wind blows,
it is immediately uprooted.(Babylonian Talmud, Ta’anit 20A)
In a business dispute, trying to fight an inevitable, unfavorable judgement is like a cedar trying to fight a “southerly wind” ..whoops, there I go with the metaphor again. The point is: Save your energy, accept it, move on. Or to quote a less ancient source:
So tell me what ya gonna do
When there aint no where to run
When judgement comes for you
When judgement comes for you
So tell me what ya gonna do
When there aint no where to hide
When judgement comes for you
Cos its gonna come for you
(Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Crossroads)
I miss my Uncle Charles yall, he shouldn’t be gone…..gotta hold on, gotta stay strong, when the day come better believe Bone got a shoulder you can lean on!
[...] strong opinions and passions. In the face of chaos and uncertainty, he stood firm. He was like that metaphor of the unbending cedar tree – except no wind could uproot him. We in the family always said he’d outlive us all, [...]