My conclusions...

Many thanks to everyone who weighed in on my last question.

It was a dilemma of sorts because, on one hand, I really need to know when it is time to set boundaries on other people ~ and how. At what point do I have the right to say "no more"? How much do I contribute to separation by allowing my ego to demand certain things of others? Decency, of course. Kindness is what I choose in my friendships and I am drawn to people who are kind. I don't care for inconsiderate, careless or thoughtless people. That's not ego. That's simply respect for my own existence. Being a person of grace doesn't mean that we become doormats for everyone else's bad behavior.

In the case of my mother, I have forgiven her. At the same time, I don't sanction her behavior. I don't choose to have a relationship with her. She may have grown a lot in the past 20 years which is the approximate length of our estrangement. What I do know is that she has never approached me.

I behaved similarly for many years. I was a rather heartless person and didn't show much compassion for other people. That was a direct result of my mother's modeling.

She cost me a lot of years because I didn't know any better. It cost me many years that I could have spent in community and didn't because I was such an unappealing person.

The cycle has to end somewhere. We can show compassion to another person without becoming emotionally involved in the outcome. We can do it without becoming attached. If we know that some action will deliberately hurt someone else, then we contribute to the suffering of all of us.

I will acknowledge her in the same way I would acknowledge any other woman who is a mother. It is not my job to be judge and jury, condemning her to something that I know would be hurtful and damaging not only to her but to the whole human community. That isn't balancing the scales. That's punishment.

She will get an email from me. Basically it will say something like "thinking of you". Nothing more. Nothing less. In that simple gesture, I know I am doing the best I can with a very difficult situation. While I can't be hypocritical and express feelings that are not genuine, I can wish her peace. I wish that for everyone.

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Weekend: Feathers in the Wind...

One of the things I do after I've found myself in some sort of conflict is to spend some time in quiet thought. It is also when I call in my team of trusted others, those who know me, whom I know and with whom I have a relationship that allows for frank discussion.

One of those people is Ajahn S. I trust his judgment and perception without question.

After Wednesday's conflict, I needed his perspective. I wrote him an email, explaining what had occurred from my perspective, provided him with all the links and relevant data.. and asked him to tell me his thoughts.

He has given me permission to reprint them here. Since English is his second language, I have edited. He has seen it and approved of the changes I made, none of which involve content.

His comments are in italics.

"I don't want to sound like a fortune cookie, but if this roundtable discussion has pushed a button in you that would set you off that severely, then you have been given a great gift. When our behavior is all that we want it to be, we don't learn much of anything about ourselves. You've been given an opportunity to dig into something that gets you right where you live."

It would have been quite a stretch to get me to buy this one on first glance! I didn't feel like I'd been given a gift. It felt more like a sucker punch!

He continues:

"Now, maybe, in order to deal with that, you need to take some time away. Fine. But please don't just turn tail and run. And don't blame it on anyone else. "

It was not and is not my intent to blame anyone else.. or to turn tail and run. What I really want to learn is a way to disagree more effectively, how to use my voice without it getting loud and brash. I want to be heard.. in a gentler way.

"I'm reminded of something someone said to me, many years ago, about mental illness. He said, "Heck, if we could send everybody on an endless cruise -- no stress, no poverty -- there wouldn't _be_ any mental illness." I've always felt that he was exaggerating, but there is a little kernel of truth in what he was saying. It's the things that _stress_ us, that _challenge_ our ideas about ourselves, that teach us most about who we are. I'm not suggesting that you run face-first into an electric fan, but it would be sad and wasteful for you to ignore this opportunity to learn more about yourself. How else can you grow and change for the better?"

This is a good point... but I would like to examine is how we can ALL do this better. I don't mean that in a judgmental sense. What I mean is establishing a way that will give us all the freedom to engage in conflicting opinions without hurting each other. How can we disagree without creating collateral damage? I'm well aware of the fact that I created a bit more than my share. Why do we so often find ourselves in conflict and there are bloody bodies found among the survivors? Others are simply annihilated.

"The way that we can develop compassion for even the people who don't have any compassion is to be able to bear to catch ourselves in the moments when our compassion is missing-in-action or otherwise deficient. If we give into the urge to blame our lapse on the phase of the moon or western technology or whatever, then we miss out on that opportunity, and we'll spend the rest of our lives looking down (however subtly) on others. "

Isn't it true? There is usually something we can manage to find as an object of blame. It would have been different if we'd been in person? It would have been different if the zebra crossed the road at the right time on Tuesday?

That doesn't quite make sense, does it? Not really. We all own our lapses. I own mine.

"So, as I see it, you're at a choice point. Do you scramble madly to distance yourself from your actions and remove any sense of responsibility (that's the clinging-to-the-need-to-be-right part)? Or do you sit down and say, wow, I really did something that I find reprehensible. And you sit with that, literally, in meditation. Poke it, prod it, feel it, feel around it, accept it, reject it, analyze it, fantasize about it, in short -- work through it. Believe me, in the long run, you'll be a far more humane being for doing so. And that is what it's all about, right?"

With loving-kindness,
S******

I think that is what we all wanted. And the further we try to distance ourselves from these issues, the more they repeat themselves. As women, we are not accustomed to conflict or disagreement. We are trained to make nice-nice and never offend. So when the volcano begins to rumble, it can overflow so quickly that it seems spontaneous. During that conflict, I hurt another human being with my words. Words matter. If you don't believe me, take a feather pillow to the top of a mountain, rip it open and let the feathers fly in the wind. Now go try to pick them up. That is what careless speech is like. There is no way to ever take those words back ~ and nothing is ever the same again.

What that does is effectively contribute to silencing all of us ~ making us more reluctant to discuss the important stuff next time ~ even though we have a similar goal, to make the world a better place and to understand and resolve complex issues.

We are all good people.

I believe that. We need to remember that. I need to remember that.

With loving-kindness...

Indeed.

Of course, I would like to hear your views and thoughts on conflict and conflict resolution, how you respond to conflict, how you deal with it.

~*~

** Please take a few moments to go this site and offer Jenn some support. Of course, I send all of my best healing thoughts to her.

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