The worst situation occurs every evening when your neighbour starts blasting the karaoke system seriously affecting your family life. You knew it was an obvious retaliation. The conflict has certainly grown out of proportion.
You really do not want to be influenced by superstition, much less to destroy an important part of your life because of it. You especially do not want to compromise after seeing the unpleasant actions of your neighbour. However, the noise has taken its toll on your family. Moreover, you fear of much more terrible things he might do in future. What can you do?
The worst situation occurs every evening when your neighbour starts blasting the karaoke system seriously affecting your family life. You knew it was an obvious retaliation. The conflict has certainly grown out of proportion.
Hi Junius,
ReplyDeleteYou have got a wonderful and creative story here. Love it! Though in the predominantly high-rise flats in Singapore, not many of us would be able to experience something like this (dirty plants along the HDB corridor maybe?).
Nevertheless, I feel that the matter can be resolved, or at least made less hostile. Of course, the easiest way out would be to chop the tree down, but for a special tree like that, it is certainly not the solution.
To reduce the leaf litter, I would first hire a gardener to trim the leaves on the tree, a tree needs the routine trimmings after all. This would reduce the chances of my neighbour using the leaf litter as an excuse to lodge a police report. Also, this could be a way to show my willingness to compromise. Since both parties would not budge from our stands, being able to reach a compromise becomes even more crucial.
I would find a suitable time to speak to him, telling him the history of the tree and how important it has been in my family's life, so much so that it has became a sacred object. I would touch his heart with my fervour and enthusiasm. A person who genuinely has a love for something would be passionate and exude a positive aura that can move anyone around him.
Then, I would invite my neighbour to my house for tea under the shady canopy of the tree, thereby building a better rapport with him. With my utmost sincerity, I would win him over.
Lastly, I would explain to him that chopping down a 'sacred' tree like mine would actually do more harm than good. Superstitious or not, a white lie may sometimes be beneficial to your cause!
Regards,
Justin
Hi Junius,
ReplyDeleteI believe that root of the conflict is the difference in beliefs between my neighbour and I.
To solve the problem, firstly, I would try to convince him that the tree is harmless by giving examples of my family and the previous neighbours being perfectly fine after living near the tree for so many years. If he is not convinced, then I would suggest to him that he should find proves to show that the spirits exist. For instance, if he shows that he encountered a series of bad happenings, I might consider chopping off the tree and apologise to him as a mean to console him.
However, if he continues to carry out the unpleasant actions as a form of retaliation and unable to prove himself to be true, it means that the problem cannot be solved by talks between the two of us. I would make a police report of his deliberate evil doings to stop him from doing harm to my family. Hopefully this would solve the problem.
Something to think about:
The neighbour insists that the tree is harmful to his family, yet he cannot prove it. But it is obvious that the neighbour is doing harm to my family. What a contradict!
Jing Mei
Hi Junius,
ReplyDeleteThis is such a difficult situation. However, you must choose between keeping the tree or chopping it down. If I were you, I would choose to keep the tree. Firstly, it has already been a part of your family for many years. In addition, you and your trees had many unforgotten memories together. Chopping it down will cause a big pain to you. Secondly, your neighbor is now having bad feeling about you. Therefore, if you chop down your tree, he just stop disturbing you but do not stop hating you.
To solve this problem, I think the only way is to call the police when your neighbor have the disturbing behavior. It is troublesome but it is still better than your tree.
Regards,
Khoa
That's a tight situation you have gotten me into!
ReplyDeleteMy neighbour should have some way of accessing my compound if he is able to dump the leaf litter on my porch everytime. To solve this problem, I'd do something to cut off his access point. If he merely dumps them over the wall, I'll raise the height of the wall separating our homes whereby even the tree will not dirty his house.
I am sure there is a rule against causing public disturbance through the medium of noise. If I call the police when my neighbour resorts to playing loud music despite repeated warnings, they would not hesitate to take some action against him.
To settle the waters, I would invite my neighbour over and get a priest to exorcise the bad spirits out of the tree. I believe bad omens are all a creation of the mind. Once my neighbour is convinced that the priest has driven away the spirits he will find it hard to blame tree for causing misfortunes to his family.
This should settle things in an amicable fashion where my neighbour is pleased and I need not cut my tree down.
-Lakshmi
Thank you all for the solutions proposed. Justin has a good approach which I believe will work to a certain extent. Jing Mei also brought up a relevant point there about how the neighbour needs to prove to me that the tree is indeed harmful. Khoa Tran has another good point there; cutting my tree as a form of compromise will not change his impression of me.
ReplyDeleteI knew that my neighbour was very superstitious and that he had consulted with a superstition guide before requesting me to cut down the tree. I asked if he can use the same method to find a second alternative. Surprisingly, he did find one. All I had to do was to plant another different tree beside the old one to counter the ‘harmful’ effects. This was certainly a better solution for me. I did so and soon enough, the conflict was gone. This shows that sometimes, conflicts can be resolved if we take one step back and find another route instead of having both parties meeting each other head on.