Perspective Produces Progress

Each week I try to write something that will either make you think about a rather humdrum mortgage/real estate topic in a new way or at least clear the cerebral cobwebs. Admittedly, some weeks I’m better at accomplishing that than others – my apologies for those “off” weeks. As I’ve been trying to come up with a topic for this week’s missive, it’s not so much that I’ve been hitting a brick wall that’s been keeping me from inspiration, it’s that I’ve felt sort of “dragged down” by so many things that have been happening here in our own backyard over the past few weeks that have been . . . less than inspiring.

It seems that wherever you turn – TV, radio, Facebook, Instagram, newspapers (they still exist) – one party isn’t happy unless the opposing party is proven wrong and/or devastated. I’m not advocating the philosophy that “everyone’s a winner and should get a trophy just for showing up” – I’m an advocate of just the opposite when it comes to competition: people learn from not always winning. No, what I mean is that there’s so much hatred and vitriol (that’s a fancy word for low-down dirty meanness) being poured out in these written and verbal attacks, you’d think the subject being contended were a matter of life and death EVERY TIME. How exhausting!

I’m reminded of a quote from the novel To Kill a Mockingbird where the father, Atticus Finch, is helping his daughter, Scout, understand a fundamental truth: “First of all, if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider all things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Obviously, the family patriarch isn’t suggesting his daughter pull a Silence of the Lambs on anyone. His advice, though, that she stop for a minute and understand another person’s point of view will help defuse most situations or at least soften what may be prepared to come out of her mouth or flow from her fingers on a keyboard. We’d all be better off following Mr. Finch’s advice.

In a real estate transaction, you have two sides, and that’s okay. What’s not okay, though, is that these two sides are, far too often, viewed as opposing sides – and that hurts far more than it helps. Before a home goes under contract, sure, fight like the dickens to get the best price (for the buyer and the seller). However, once that house goes under contract, the two sides should now operate as a team. Each member of that team, certainly, has different responsibilities and should be willing to live up to them in their entirety. But the fact of the matter is everyone in that transaction has THE SAME GOAL: close the deal for the agreed-upon price ON TIME. Climb into the other party’s skin, metaphorically (let’s be clear), and walk around for a while so you can understand that you have the same goal. Again, we’d all be better off following Mr. Finch’s advice, right?

Well, let me give you one more morsel of homespun wisdom from Harper Lee’s American literary classic. Atticus has been asked to defend someone in court, and he knows it’s not a popular position he’s about to assume among his peers and neighbors, but he says this to his kids: “This time we aren’t fighting the Yankees, we’re fighting our friends. But remember this, no matter how bitter things get, they’re still our friends and this is still our home.” Let’s all remember, real estate is important, but it isn’t a matter of life and death! Perspective produces progress.