Conflict

Conflict is a natural state of life. We all face conflicts with ourselves, with each other, with the world in general. We have to learn how to handle conflict with grace and dignity, and how to fight problems without fighting people. It’s not an easy issue. It’s very easy to personalize conflict, to claim that the problem is the other person, not the situation. I’m going to refer to interpersonal conflict, but the same issues exist in conflict within the self or against nature.

The first issue in conflict is how the entity one is in conflict with is seen. It is very easy to see the other person as all bad, as evil, as an enemy forever and always. When we start seeing the other person as something other than a person, we lose a grip on our own humanity.

Conflict is when two or more people strive against each other. It is a natural outcome of scarce recourses, of the fact that there is always more to be desired than to go around. It is not the nature of conflict that is the problem, but how it is approached and what the desired outcome is. It is very easy to turn from a natural competition of recourses to an unnatural feeling of anger and hatred of the people competed against. We must recognize the right to strive against each other for the same goal while only striving for that goal, and not simply for the desire to strive against the other. We should only compete for needed items or equally-desired items, and for those things which are not needed, only wanted, we should compete much less strongly. (When fighting for one’s life, I do not feel capable of saying what one can and cannot do. For anything less valuable, however, one should and must use moral judgment. Do not do anything one would not do to the Divine, for that is who you are striving against, even as that is who you are striving for).

We must learn to handle conflict in a mature manner. While it is an inevitable part of life, we still need to handle it with dignity and grace, and be sure that the conflict we enter is one we need to be in. When we fight simply for the sake of fighting, we belittle ourselves and the Divine. When we strive only when we need to and for those things that are worthwhile, we enrich the Universe.

Questions:
What things are worth striving for in conflict? What things do you find yourself in conflict over that aren’t worth it?
How do you handle conflict with grace and dignity?
How do you see those things you are in conflict with? How should you?

Misfortune

Why do bad things happen? Is it karma, a learning experience, cause and effect, blind chance? Do we deserve what happens to us, and can we blame others for what happens to them? Religion standardly tries to answer two questions about misfortune. "Why does it happen to me," and "How do I deal with it when it happens to others?"

They're basically the same question, of course. If karma happens, it happens to everyone. If everything is random chance, then perhaps there really is no difference between someone on Wall Street in a business suit and the homeless man outside. The reasons we believe why misfortune happen affect how we handle the random chance in our lives, and understanding those reasons changes everything as to how we deal with it.

We are all affected by the decisions of each other. Much misfortune in our lives is the result of someone else's action, whether or not it is meant to affect us. A layoff, a car accident, relationship issues, all are because of other people's actions and reactions to what is happening in their lives. We cannot live unaffected by other people's actions, and to blame human actions on Fate, or Karma, or Divine intervention of any sort is to claim to rob all other people of their free will. Whether or not certain actions are predisposed, at heart we all are mutually responsible for all things that happen as the result of human action, and individually responsible for those things we do.

And of those things that have no human agency? Sickness, genetic miscues, random natural disasters? Why, we scream at the sky. Who is at fault? Who can we blame? Unfortunately, there are no good answers to that, either. Bad things happen through no fault of anyone, God or Man. And when they happen, simply because of the way the world works, someone must be affected by that. Good, bad, or indifferent, when bad things happen, everyone around is affected. No one can be specially protected or punished. A perfect world does not exist, would not have created us even if it did exist, and would never allow the growth that gives us meaning. Which sentences us all to misfortune and pain, along with good fortune and joy.

So how do we cope with these misfortunes? Are we merely subject to the whims of chance, without control over our lives, unable to plan ahead? Of course not. Our own acts have consequences and cause changes, and how we act determines how people react to us. While we cannot control how other people respond to us, we can and should control how we interact with others, and how we affect people. What we do returns to us, sooner or later. As we live, so are we affected by others, trusted or not, loved or not, by how we behave.

And we have the choice, at all times, to change our actions, to be more like what we hope to gain. While we still need to reap the results of previous actions, we are never forced to behave in a way that has results we no longer want. We are the authors of our own destinies, and we can change the predisposition of our future at any time, if we so choose. It isn't easy, but it is possible. And remembering the possibility removes us from the role of victim, and gives us the role of author of our own lives.

Questions:
How do you control the way people see you? Do your actions match your desired consequences?
How can you cope with misfortune with grace and dignity? Does that change how the problem feels?
Why is it important to realize that we control much of our destinies? To realise that we affect the destinies of t hose around us?