Conflict

As a teacher I have to try to resolve differences nearly every day of the week. Now keep in mind that for most of my teaching career, I’ve been working with ten and eleven year old children. However, I find that there’s not much difference between children and adults, especially when it comes to feelings. I think our feeling-emotional side is really closest to the child inside of all of us. And we get just as hurt as children do when we feel slighted or attacked verbally.

One of the biggest lies that most of us tell (including me, by the way. I don’t leave myself out of this) is that we don’t care what other people think about us. That is nothing but pure unadulterated bullshit, although I have no clue what adulterated bullshit is like. But this bullshit is Unadulterated, that is for sure (dude). Of course we care what people think about us. That’s why we look in the mirror before we go out of the house. It’s one of the reasons why we drive the cars we drive and why we posted most of the crap that’s up on our profiles. And that’s why we get so upset when we think that people are telling lies about us. It’s a miserable feeling. I know. I’ve been there. And so has everybody else at one time or another. And I think we get so upset about the “lies” because we don’t want other people believing those things are true about us.

First, I’d like to attempt to tackle this concept of “truth”. Everybody has truths. My truths are not your truths. And yet both of our truths are equally valid and invalid at the same time. For example, when Brittany Spears performed not long ago many people complained that she was fat. I read those comments and thought those people must be nuts. Brittany isn’t fat. I’M fat. I can tell the difference. True enough, she has put on some extra pounds since her “Ooooops! I Did it Again” days, but fat? Please! Linda Rondstadt became fat (sorry Linda, I love you, but it’s true). And some could even argue with that, I suppose. Marilyn Monroe was considered the sexiest woman alive and she weighed over 160 pounds and was a size 16! So I would say that fat is in the eye of the beholder. To some people Brittany is fat. To others, she still looks pretty damn sexy, in a young, poor white trash sort of way. Of course, we can all still agree that she’s nuts. I am a liberal (most would say). Some of my feminist treehugging whale saving communist leaning friends would say I’m still pretty conservative.

Some of us might look with compassion on a guy who steals food for his hungry kids. Others would simply see him as a thief. That he stole food may be a fact. But whether or not the guy is a thief may be open to debate. John Lennon left his wife and kid to be with a woman with whom he fell madly in love. I guess that makes him a pretty crappy husband and father. But then, how many people have the good fortune to bump into a soul mate? There can be no doubt that the story of John and Yoko is one of great love stories of our time. They were devoted to each other. Was John wrong to walk away from his family to follow the woman of his dreams?

As far as truth goes, the perception of truth is truth enough. You said something that makes me feel as though you were calling me an idiot. Maybe you were; maybe you weren’t. But the fact that I think you did makes it truth enough to me. I felt the same hurt either way. Whether it was your intention to smash into my car or whether it was an accident doesn’t matter as far as the condition of my car enters into things. It continues to be crumpled. If someone was slighted, the slight is real, whether intended or not. Yes, you say, but people shouldn’t be so easily offended. I would love to erase the word should from our language. There is no should. There only is what is. Whether or not my arm SHOULD bruise when you hit it is of no importance. The fact remains that it is bruised. And the fact that the blow was unintentional, or meant for someone else doesn’t make the bruise go away either. So when anybody is talking about truth, it seems to me to be a good idea to step back and try to see ALL the possible truths associated with a particular situation.

And most of all the hurts we suffer have to do with someone, whether deliberately or not, attacking our self-perception. We have this idea of ourselves and when someone contradicts it, it pisses us off. The sad thing, is that often as not, nobody is saying anything. I remember seeing a kid get really upset on the playground once, so I walked up to the kid and asked what was wrong.

“Those kids are talking about me!” He said through his tears.

“Which kids?” I asked.

The kid just pointed toward the fence about 200 yards away and said, “Those kids, Jose and Mario.”

“You mean those two boys on the other side of the playground? How do you know? Did you hear them? What did they say?”

“No, but they’re looking at me!”

“How do you know they’re looking at YOU?”

And the kid looked dumbfounded, as though he were talking to someone somewhat intellectually challenged (to be politically correct about it). If a person’s head was pointed in his direction, it just seemed obvious that they were looking at him, in spite of the myriad other things that might occupy his or her gaze. And if they were talking at the same time, they had to be talking about him. And so this comes as the biggest shock to a lot of people, adults included.

I’m sorry, but you’re just not that important. I mean, you are to me, and to yourself, and to the people who love you. But, most people are not spending their time trying to figure out ways to make you miserable. They have other things to do, other things on their mind. In fact, they may have so many things on their mind that they might even actually say something to you without thinking about how that statement may affect you. That is because they are thinking about themselves and NOT thinking about you. The woman who cut you off on the freeway would have cut off ANYBODY in your lane, not just you. I know that every year I have to explain to some child (and his or her parents) who has gotten it into his or her head that I don’t like them that I don’t spend my evenings trying to think up ways to slight him or her or make him or her miserable. I have too many other worries. It’s true. There are some kids I don’t particularly like. They are not all likable. But I don’t have time to find ways to be unfair. In fact, being unfair just makes my life more miserable as a teacher, because then I have to deal with stupid complaints.

There might be a kid who is always disrupting the class, never doing the assignments, and always getting into fights. So I might not always be Mr. Sweetness and Light with that kid. And there might be another kid who always listens in class, always does the work, and is kind and helpful to other children. I might tend to be more receptive to that kid. But it has nothing to do with the kid. It has to do with the things they do. The first kid isn’t going to get a lot of privileges like being sent on errands or allowed to help around the classroom. But that isn’t because I don’t like the kid, it’s because the kid has proven himself or herself to be irresponsible and undependable. Still, the truth is the truth as far as the kid is concerned. Because people don’t tend to see themselves as irresponsible and undependable. So it must be because I don’t like them.

Children always assume that when someone bumps into them it’s on purpose. When people hit them with the ball, it was deliberate. This is because children always think that the universe revolves around them. But it doesn’t. Not by a long shot. And there are a lot of adults who think the universe revolves around them (myself included, from time to time). And so, since most people’s slights towards us are unintended, I think it would be good to cut them a little slack and be a little more forgiving. And most of the time, when people do hurt us on purpose, it’s because they have perceived some injury from us. This may have been intended or unintended, or even totally imagined, but it is an injury nonetheless.

I have yet to find a conflict amongst children where both parties weren’t partly to blame in some way, even if the slight was unintended. That is why I have found that most conflict is caused by a failure to communicate (to quote a line from “Cool Hand Luke”). Often as not, we don’t tell people when they are bothering us until we explode. I guess we figured that they were supposed to read our minds or something. We figured that everybody was thinking about us, when the dirty bastards were thinking about themselves. People should spend their time thinking about ME, dammit, just as I do. And then when we DO talk, we just say all the wrong things and make matters worse.

There are simple rules to follow when trying to resolve a conflict. I have been trained in those rules. And I will pass them on to you in another blog, because this one is getting too damn long. So my next blog will be all about those simple rules about how to argue in a positive way. We face conflicts every single day and those conflicts just add to our stress level. If we could just resolve those conflicts in a positive way, then perhaps we could have happier lives. This first thing we have to do is let go of the idea of one person winning and the other person losing. There is a way that everybody can come out winning. You’ll see what I mean.