By Donald Morton, EiC ยท Opinion
James Sexton, a divorce lawyer in New York, tells a story about a lemon. Two people both want it, but there is only one. Ask anyone what's fair and they'll tell you to cut it in half, and nobody would argue with that. So the knife goes down the middle and each of them walks off with a half.
Clean enough story, fair is fair, justice is done, now pay the lawyers. That leaves something out, the human condition. One of them wanted the lemon for its zest, to bake with. For the other, it was the juice, to make lemonade. Each of them threw away exactly half of what the other one needed. They could both have had all of what they came for, and instead they both ended up poorer, because nobody stopped for one second to ask what the other person needed it for.
I can't hear that story without seeing North Frontenac in it, because we cut lemons here all the time. In the council chamber a question can get settled down the middle, and everyone leaves with half of what they came for. The lake associations and the folks who live along the back roads sometimes talk past each other about what the township owes them, and whenever the roads argument comes around again, it comes around in the same shape it had the last time. There's a line between the people who are here for the summer and the people who are here for the winter too, and too often we shout across it instead of walking over. Late at night the Facebook threads do the worst of it. Somebody types what they're against, somebody else types back what they're against, and the lemon gets cut again.
When was the last time, in any of those fights, someone stopped and said, wait, what do you need this for? Most of the time we're so sure the other side wants the same half we do that it never occurs to us to check, and we go on fighting over where the knife comes down.
I have watched this election closely, and I have seen with my own eyes the shameless attacks slung back and forth. They have come from both sides. People have said and written things about their neighbours that they would never say to them face to face. Every one of those attacks was a knife coming down on a lemon, and I'll tell you plainly that it breaks my heart, because I know the people here. I know what this township does when a truck goes in the ditch or a family loses a house to fire. We are good people, and I've seen it too many times to believe anything else.
So I'm asking you, and I'm begging you, to take a second. Just one. Before you answer the next post or stand up at the next meeting, stop and choose the other path. Ask the person across from you what they're after before you tell them what you think of it. You may find out they wanted the zest all along.
The way we do things now may be working for some of us. It isn't working for everyone, and it never will, because a method that cuts every lemon in half will always leave somebody throwing away what they needed. The system can stay as it is, the way council is set up and the by-laws it passes, and what has to change is the approach, the method we bring to the table before anything gets divided. Asking first is how I believe this township should be run, and how every problem in front of it should be met from here on. Every one of us can start tomorrow morning, and it won't take a single motion.
The election is over, yet we are all still living on the same roads and buying our bread at the same counters. The next argument is already coming, maybe at your own kitchen table. When it gets there, before anybody reaches for the knife, ask the one question that would have saved the lemon: what do you need it for?