IF VIEWED AS the overlap between two individual areas of experience, common ground can be seen as the darkened area of the Venn diagram in which all similarities are included and all differences are excluded. A couple first meets. Born within six months of one another, within the same medium-sized city, and of comparable socio-economic class, they automatically overlap somewhere between 33 to 35 percent.
The 60 to 45 points of difference in their nature or nurture might place them in separate post-secondary programs — her excess empathy and caring predisposing her to the liberal arts and a career in education and his pedantic obsessive nature predisposing him to the physical sciences and a career in mechanical engineering — but their extracurricular interest in music persists. He forms a band with some other overachieving schoolmates, and she shows up at one of their under attended shows. With such common ground, the two have a fair chance of falling into conversation at the mostly empty tavern performance space after the show. She nurses her one-beer limit beer, and he orders his alcohol-is a-slippery-slope coffee, and later, when they fall together and become a couple, they will likely use the money they save with a city-hall wedding for a detached home within walking distance of a school and with three bedrooms: one bedroom for them, one for a child, and one for a home office. Later still, when that one child is born as tangible, living proof of their common ground and is named Benjamin, the parents will, for a short while, overlap more than they ever have or ever will again.
This story is from the October 2018 edition of The Walrus.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the October 2018 edition of The Walrus.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Invisible Lives
Without immigration status, Canada's undocumented youth stay in the shadows
My Guilty Pleasure
"The late nights are mine alone, and I'll spend them however I damn well please"
Vaclav Smil Is Fed Up
The acclaimed environmental scientist is criticizing climate activists, shunning media, and stepping back just when we need him most
It's Time for a Birth Control Revolution
What the pill teaches us about the failure - and future - of women's health care
Would You Watch a Play about Hydro Electricity?
How documentary theatre struck a chord in Quebec
Still Spinning
One record chain has bet big on a new appetite for physical media
Just So You Know, I Love My Mother
In many ways, multi-generational living makes sense. But that doesn't make it easy
Art of the Steal
Why are plundered African artifacts still in Western museums?
Canada in the Middle
What role can we play in easing the war in Gaza?
Canadian Multiculturalism: A Work in Progress
As we mark fifty years since the adoption of Canada’s federal multiculturalism policy, human rights advocate AMIRA ELGHAWABY celebrates its merits and reflects on the work that is yet to be done when it comes to inclusion, acceptance, and fighting systemic racism in our country.