I am participating in a conflict resolution training program this week, with both online and in-person components. I am excited to take this course because it is helping me to redefine conflict as natural, healthy, and an opportunity to repair and deepen relationships. The course is also teaching me new tools for engaging in conflict and developing solutions together with others. Today's presentation mentioned that the primary definition for the word peace is "the absence of war" and that almost all of the common definitions of peace are double negatives, including "freedom from disturbance" and "freedom from civil disorder". We are lacking a positive definition of peace - of defining what peace
is, rather than what peace
isn't. Our culture desperately needs a clear vision of what peace is, of what we are trying to create together. Peace Studies has done a lot of work to define "positive peace". I know very little about it so far, but maybe by the end of this course I'll understand it more clearly. This got me thinking about the importance of visioning, of focusing on what it is I want to see rather than what I do
not want to see. There is a fine line, however, between creating a vision and obsessing about the future. If the vision is too stiff and specific, it will be constricting rather than inspiring. But having no vision means having nothing to build or create, just something to move away from. How do you have visions of the future without leaving the present too much? How do you move toward what you want, and simultaneously accept "what is" right now?
Duh.
ReplyDeleteYou told me the answer to this one, sensei...
Focus on the emotions that you want to continue feeling, rather than the things you want and the places you want to go...
Git in 'ere.
Thanks for the reminder, I forgot my own advice!
DeleteIt's cool to see this seed being planted in my life 10 years ago. Now, one of my roles in life is as a mediator, and I have spent significant time developing my conflict resolution skills - both to facilitate other peoples' processes and for my own relationships.
ReplyDeleteThis moment 10 years ago was a huge breakthrough step for me along that journey. This was the moment I chose to skill up by learn more about conflict, which I was very afraid of at the time. I was a chronic conflict avoider. I am still someone who leans heavily toward avoiding conflict, but I also have waaaay more capacity to engage in conflict in healthy and productive ways.
On this journey to learn healthy conflict skills, I've had to face a lot of fears about what would happen if I initiated a hard conversation, based on my childhood experiences. Having new experiences around conflict is helping me feel way less afraid of it than I used to. Now I know that some people can be receptive to difficult information, that some people can share their difficult truths with me with gentle lovingkindness. And I trust myself to end a conversation that involved multiple triggered people, where our Parts are talking to each other. I can't always pause a conversation successfully, but when I can, it prevents a lot of the damage of conflict from happening. And then we can recalibrate and try again another time. This is a skill I am currently honing, along with the discernment of who it is safe to engage in conflict with, vs. who I choose to limit my relationships with because there isn't the synergy necessary for us to engage in conflict resolution with each other.