ON CONFLICT

People love conflict. We say we don't but we lie. Either that or we are delusional. Or both. We love to take on other people, launch attacks, defend from them, compete, deride, criticize, punch or eat chocolate (as a passive aggressive strategy to deflect it, this time against ourselves). Maybe it's in the genes or maybe it's a social skill learned from childhood to create our seat at the table. "Quien no llora no mama" (those who don't cry, don't get to the tit) says a Spanish proverb. But we all know many of those proverbs have been sanitized to allow preachers and priests to nail us with them from the pulpit: The real words for that idea should sound something like "quien no pisa, no avanza" (those who don step on, don't move on), or "dog eats dog" in the more brutal modern American vernacular.

But that doesn't mean we go further, accomplish more or are happier. In fact, it may just be the opposite.

Perhaps conflict is indeed in our veins, but do we actually need to get sucked by it? Is it really a good coping strategy? Using a Nature metaphor, can we just not act like water and go around the rock instead of pound it? From childhood we are bombarded with tales about how hard things are, about fighting to get through, about no-pain-no-gain, and a myriad of other struggle-based life directives. No disputing here that life presents challenges. My dialogue is about whether those challenges are better dealt with through hardship, fight, conflict, battle, pain... Or whether sometimes (or always) there are other options that can be equally effective, if not more, but involve winding around the bend or sliding through the seams instead of pushing on or cutting through. In my most enlightened moments–at least I like to think of them that way–I hark back to the beautiful example provided by Miguel de Cervantes in The Quixote: In one of its most famous passages, when Alonso Quijano sees the windmills gyrating their wings in the distance, he decides they are evil ogres or giants and rambles onwards to attack them. Interestingly, not only does he not imagine they could be a bunch of affable creatures carousing in the La Mancha sun. No. Quijano (Cervantes) decides they must be bad guys and, then, goes right at them instead of, for example, taking a detour or meandering through the sharp wings (swords) in search of a better day or way to enderezar tuertos (right wrongs) in his idealist mind. Notice that I am not even referring to fleeing, but moving on without engaging in direct conflict, especially when conflict is not actively seeking us but it's just there. Granted, it may be hard to discern when we need or can skirt around, or wait for the storm to pass, and when it's necessary to clash. Perhaps if we practiced that skill or were reminded of that possibility more often instead of the constant barrage of war and conflict metaphors we might make things actually easier for us and, therefore, help ourselves to deal with obstacles in a more forgiving, less stressful and, I dare say, productive manner.