Like sound, we can't run away from smoke. We can reduce them. I had a case that I mediated on excessive smoke.
The complainant was a young family that had two young children. The respondent was an elderly lady that lives alone.
The complaint was that there was excessive smoke due to burning of joss -sticks. The lady’s defence was interesting; she claims that she has been staying there for over 30 years, and there was no issue, so the complainant was just petty.
While probing further, it came to light that one of the children is asthmatic and could not take the smoke. We also found that the elderly lady is very rigid to her religious beliefs.
The challenge was, how are we going to say what is excessive. As the saying goes,”1 man’s meat is another man’s poison.”
We need to manage to make the elderly Aunty after a lot of effort and time to understand and accept that she would reduce the burning of joss-sticks. I think what convinced her was the thought of putting that child health at risk and how would she feel?
As Mediators, we need to put ourselves in the parties shoes to understand their position so that we can help them. We must motivate parties to exercise their moral judgements.
The link below is an article from the Straits Times on how smoke, sound and smell affected us during the pandemic. Have a read.
https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/getting-riled-up-by-neighbours-cigarette-smoke-noise-and-litt
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