When I’m in conflict with someone - particularly with someone significant in my life - the burden is more on me than on them. Sometimes I wonder why we don’t have a class early on in our education to teach us conflict resolution. Conflict is so much a part of life. If not trained otherwise, the natural human reaction is to blame the other, to believe in the rightness of our own actions, and to feel hurt or angry or both.

Without concerted effort, it is not easy to set aside our own feelings and look carefully at the source of the conflict. What part did we contribute to this? Can I put myself on the other side and feel what he/she/they are feeling? Whether we agree or not has little importance. What matters is that we are able to at least know what drives the other side to react so violently, so irrationally, so angrily.

Here are a few quotes on this topic from my up and coming book, Pilgrim Soul:

“Understanding is the key to forgiveness. And without forgiveness, there can be no healing.”
 
“Understanding can unlock many seemingly locked doors…But it demands letting go of the need to control the outcome. It takes a great deal of courage to search for real truth.” 

“Like the sacred biblical number, she discovered that she had gone through seven stages of grieving: sadness, anger, seeing reality, seeking understanding, rediscovering self-worth, forgiveness, and risking new beginnings. She recognizes that healing doesn’t necessarily take place in this order. Usually, the first and the last steps are in place but in between it can happen in just about any fashion. 

Whereas, any movement toward international peace must begin with peace at home, and
Whereas, the differing political views here at home continue to create dissension among ourselves, and
Whereas, it is our desire to demonstrate by our example how people with differing outlooks can come together to find common ground, and
Whereas, we recognize that our common ground is the desire for peaceful coexistence at home and throughout the world, and
Whereas, we agree that world peace cannot occur in a single, sweeping moment of time but must be fostered person by person, state by state, political party by political party, and
Whereas, while we will never all agree among ourselves on many aspects of war and peace, we do agree that any advancement toward resolving conflict must begin through understanding the source of misunderstanding.
 
 

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