6.29.2020 – find some common ground

find some common ground
bitter and hopeless struggle
otherwise life is

From the essay, Ten Things I Have Learned by Milton Glaser.

I came across the writings of this artist only after he died.

In point number 1 of his essay, Ten Things, Glaser wrote;

This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the beginning of my practice I felt the opposite. Professionalism required that you didn’t particularly like the people that you worked for or at least maintained an arms length relationship to them, which meant that I never had lunch with a client or saw them socially. Then some years ago I realized that the opposite was true. I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client. And I am not talking about professionalism; I am talking about affection. I am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle.

While the target audience is professional artists, I find this sentence, with some minor tweaking so that it reads That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with another person, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle applies to everyone.

I feel know what he means.