“Now,” Yewell went on, “what were you about to say?”
“I don’t remember. I’m still a little freaked out by the way they’re looking at me.” Alicia and Michael stared at me, forever awaiting whatever wisdom I had to impart. Their looks weren’t exactly glazed over, as there was still profound interest in each of their eyes, but the stagnation of their gazes was more than a bit disconcerting.
“Let’s start there then,” Yewell said. “Look straight ahead, keeping both of them in your line of sight.”
I did so, Yewell being at the center point of my vision. “Okay. Now what?”
“Close your left eye.”
I closed my left eye, altering my vision to encompass all of Alicia on my right and only half of Michael on my left.
“Now close your right eye.”
I did. It was dark.
“But open your left eye again, you ninny.”
“Oh, sorry.” Now I saw mostly Michael, but only part of Alicia.
“What do you notice?”
I repeated the process a few times, opening and closing my eyes as Michael and Alicia shifted from side to side, jumping from right to left.
“Depending upon which eye I favor, I either see one or the other more clearly. It’s like my focus is directed by which side I view things from.”
“It would be quite a bit different if you were a cyclops, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose it would.”
“This is the world of opposites. You humans have adopted this view of the world in almost everything you do. Left and right.
Good and bad. Black and white. Up and down. Him and her. Us and them. Me and you.”
“What’s your point?”
“Is there really any difference?”
“Sure there is.”
“And what difference is that?” he asked, bemused.
I repeated the process again, watching them jump back and forth. “The way I see it.”
“Exactly. What did you notice in your dinner conversation?”
I closed my right eye and looked at Michael. “Michael was pretty antagonistic toward the whole marketing thing.” I switched eyes to focus on Alicia. “But Alicia was much more open to understanding.”
“Now open both of your eyes. What do you notice?”
I did as suggested. “Well, they’re both still looking at me, but they can’t really help that.”
“They didn’t have to be looking at you. What does that say?”
“That they are both interested. Regardless of their stance, they’re interested. But, I don’t know, seeing both of them… It’s balanced. He’s aggressive. She’s complacent, but… There’s harmony.”
“What does that say about all of the other pairs of opposites that you perceive in the world?”
“That there’s always a measure of balance.”
“How do you figure?”
“Well,” I surmised, “I really didn’t have to do anything. He was against. She was for. I just had to sit here and be, and it worked itself out. They found their own sense of harmony.”
The idea was so radical that it hit me like a ton of bricks. Even with complete polarities, the center point finds balance. Between black and white, there is gray. Between good and bad, there is neutrality.
“So what purpose does that impart to you?”
I considered it for a moment. “To assure that the way that I present myself to others is balanced with the way that I view myself.”
“How does that relate to marketing?”
“Well, I think the essential basis of marketing is having integrity with what you are as a business. It’s about expressing yourself and what you have to offer, but also about being true to that, and finding harmony between yourself and your customers. Because when it comes down to it, we’re all one.
“Any market must have the components of producer, product, service, and customer. Without any one of those, it’s not really a market. It’s the symbiosis between all parties that makes it work.”
“Interesting,” Alicia said as she chewed on her long awaited bite. Michael nodded ascent with a simple shrug.
Yewell had disappeared as quickly as he’d arrived. In complete harmony.
This is an excerpt from How to Survive an Estralarian Mind Meld. Come back weekly for the next part or order your copy in ebook or paperback today!
