At Peace with the Conflict.
I saw somebody the other day with whom I have a difficult history. To say that this person has had a huge impact in my life is no understatement, and we parted on terms that were not altogether peaceful.
That’s not usually how I like to leave things, but as Mick Jagger once said, “you can’t always get what you want”, and in this case, there was never going to be a peaceful way to resolve our differences.
That person will never agree with my point of view, and I will never agree with theirs.
This was the first time that we had interacted in at least a couple of years. The meeting was not planned, but occurred in the course of business. And while it was not unpleasant, it did not unfold in the way that I would have hoped for.
I knew that I was hoping too much for it to be a perfect outcome, and it was certainly better than it could have been, but nevertheless it was less than it could have been.
And for that, I was saddened.
For a long time after we had parted, I would find myself having dialogues in my head with this person, desperately trying to find a way to explain my point of view in a way that would allow the other person to finally understand the situation.
It was very frustrating to find myself spending so much emotional and mental energy on a cause that I knew to be worthless, but I felt it was a signal that my emotional self was struggling to reconcile a truth that the logical side of me already knew.
Because I always try to leave a situation balanced, and I think it’s something I can usually achieve. But that was not the case this time, and I was struggling with that emotionally.
Yet after our brief meeting was over, I felt a strange sense of lightness come over me. I realized that I had moved on emotionally. Although the other person felt it necessary to try to bring up the past, I had no desire or need to. I felt a sadness at seeing that this was still something that bothered them, and I felt a degree of pity.
So later that night, after I had explained the events of the day to my family, my youngest son asked a wonderfully insightful question that guided me into a newer understanding. His one simple question rocked me to my core….“So did you get any closure from it?”
I stopped, and allowed myself the time to work through my reactions until I came to an answer that I felt was real.
“I have made peace with the fact that there will always be a conflict between us”.
And that, for me, was incredibly freeing. My past self would ruminate over the meeting for days, trying to find some way for it all to work out, some explanation that would have soothed both sides of the disagreement, and considered myself a failure when no such explanation could be found.
But not this time.
Sometimes, it is just never going to work out, and when you find yourself in that situation, it’s ok to be ok with walking away.
Some people will just never see it from your point of view, and that’s ok too.
You have a right to have peace in your soul, despite being unable to affect it in others.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings