Once upon a time there was this white rat or was it a baby possum, and a rose-gold ballet slipper shoe, and a sandwich missing a piece of ham. It happened, but it was in a dream.
In order to process this story, you must be privy to the fact that rats and possums, twinsies in the critter world as far as I’m concerned, give me the creeps. In actuality, I’ve had few experiences with both of these animals, and this is cause for happiness in my world.
The main gist of the dream was that I picked up the critter and held it in my arms in the baby-holding position and gave it a talking-to about stealing the ham from my sandwich. This particular rat had anthropomorphized, big, blinky eyes and partly curly hair; not your usual white rat. This animal was cute only because it was a dream and I made it so in the depths of my unconscious.
The “cuddly rat” and I are “strange bedfellows,” to say the least. In fact, every detail about the dream was unlikely – from mention of the West coast, ideologically not for me; to rose-gold, not my color palette; ballet-slipper-flats, not my style; to cozying up to a rat-thief, an unlikely buddy.
Dreams aside, Charles Dickens said, “adversity brings a man acquainted with strange bedfellows” (The Pickwick Papers, 1837). Me becoming friends with a rat-thief is the strangest pairing of bedfellows, ever.
Have you ever been chucked together by some circumstance not of your making, with a person or person with whom you would never have chosen to be acquainted, yet hit it off? These are strange bedfellows. They are also, as I’ve experienced, unlikely friendships.
I like having a conglomeration of friends. Friends from work, from childhood, from school, from neighborhood and family relationships, from every skin color and ethnic background, from mixed religious, economic, social, philosophical and political perspectives, all bring me back to the center. These humans contribute to my life and make me whole, with my true self firmly centered in the middle where I’m most me.
Homogeneous is boring and dangerously self-centered, if not bigoted. If your thinking is reinforced only by those who think the same as you, your thinking will never progress beyond your box. Even if you don’t agree with someone else’s thinking, at least they have made you think outside of your usual, programmed pattern.
Unity can be found within diversity. Agreement is vital for stability. But diversity stimulates intellectual curiosity which is vital for progress. Compromise is a good thing. It allows for combining the best of many worlds.
One of our first business associates when we started our business over thirty years ago, was a hard nut to crack. He was crunchy and everything we did for him seemed wrong. But we persisted and we got over any temptation to harbor hurt feelings.
By the time he passed away, twenty-five years later, we had become just short of friends but we understood each other and had grown into warm colleagues and respected associates. In the beginning, we never would have predicted such a long and fruitful relationship with this guy.
They are Catholic, when you’re Protestant. They are Jewish, when you’re Christian. They are Liberal, when you’re Conservative. They are Gay and proud, when you’re Straight and happy to be so. They are struggling with mental illness, when you’re struggling to understand depression, bipolar, or substance dependencies.
These are strange bedfellows, but we all engage in some unlikely friendships, just like cats and dogs. We shouldn’t be so surprised to find that cats and dogs living under the same roof can become tolerant, if not unlikely friends. Would you consider becoming strange bedfellows with a rat?