It Takes Two To Tango

flickr/international-tango-festival

English, like all languages all over the world, has proverbs. One of the proverbs says, “It takes two to tango.’ It means that performing tango dancing needs two persons, usually a man and a woman. When you dance ‘dangdut’ or other dancing, you can do it by yourself. You don’t need any body else to join you dancing, but tango dancing is something different.

However, the proverb doesn’t merely talk about how to perform the dancing. It talks about cooperation. Sometimes, we can do a task by ourselves; we need no help from anybody else. In many cases, on the other hand, we need to cooperate with someone.

In order to have good cooperation, first, we have to trust each other. Prejudice is a cause that people cannot trust each other, so we have to throw far away such feeling. Very often people judge that the others have certain motives and the like. Trusting others means that we believe they are capable enough to work with us.

In addition, we have to respect each other. This manner ‘respecting others’ is a must if we want to have good cooperation. We may respect someone by focusing on his/her strength or positive things. As we all know there is nobody perfect, our colleagues may also have weaknesses or negative things. If we focus on these, we won’t be able to respect him/her. And in turn, we cannot cooperate with him/her.

It takes two to tango, but the two shouldn’t dance in their own ways. They should cooperate very well. Are you good tango dancers?

By David Solafide
This article is also put on Kompasiana