ModeNY.com

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
Your Fair(est) Share
January 20, 2010

With the times being as tough as they are, sharing has never been more important. While it's something most learn when very young, we often spend the rest of our lives wrestling with and mastering it. Indeed, as we grow older (and hopefully wiser), the situations that require sharing only become more numerous and nuanced.

Take me: First, I had to share the media spotlight with my sister, who had her own flair for the dramatic (was born a boy, faked his death, got a sex change, reemerged as a woman on the runway of Fashion Week, etc.). Soon, I had to run Mode with her as Co-Editor-in-Chief. Then I had to do the same with Wilhelmina Slater, Mode's longtime Creative-Director-turned-apparent-biological-mother-to-a-supposed-heir-to-The-Meade-Empire. You'll recall Meade was partially owned by Cal Hartley (though I try to forget it), and now I'm back to sharing with Wilhelmina again.

But we've all been there, right? Granted, the above situations might not be the everyday for the average Joe, but really, what is? Fundamentally speaking, there's little difference between splitting the last slice of pizza with your spouse, slipping toilet paper to the person with an empty roll in the next stall, or picking who gets to use the corporate jet that day. At the core of all those dilemmas is a universal challenge: Spreading limited resources between two people who need more than there is to go around.

And yet, this challenge gains a new wrinkle when the resource is not an object, but a person. It could be sharing your child with the other parent, a mutual friend with your most hated enemy, or, say, your current fabulous gay assistant with his dictatorial queen bitch of a former boss who can't accept the fact that he stopped working for her when she hastily announced leaving the company and decided to stay only when she got cold feet. (All just hypothetical examples, of course.)

Too often, those doing the sharing fail to realize the more they stake their claim on the person between them, the more of a drain that person feels, causing he/she to burn out and want nothing to do with either party, leaving nothing left to share. During these tough times, let's take a moment to realize that considering the needs of those in the middle are just as important as the needs of those on each side. If we're lucky, there'll be enough to go around for everyone.