Being at Odds

We live in a world of difficult people, or so it is convenient to believe – until the truth dawns on us that we ourselves are among their number. This is especially discomfiting in the context of family life. We don’t choose our families. We are simply landed with them, along with idiosyncrasies (theirs and our own) which seldom mellow with age. Given the assumption that our lives are made problematic by the difficult people around us, it is likely that we are part of the problem, if there is one. Perhaps this is also true of relations between nations and communities. We all suffer from blinkered vision.

Blinkered vision happens when a nation is perceived entirely within the visual/conceptual space of one individual, or in a memory retained of one unhappy experience in the context of a nation or group.  As a result, we can’t ‘see’ the other person, or the other group, completely and might not even want to. Better to let go of the memory then, as far as possible, and widen the field of vision.

A blinkered attitude to people who we dislike, but think we know well, can lead to an involuntary protectiveness which can also be misconstrued as selfishness. Selfishness is really about fear. It is about protecting the unhealed wounds which give rise to a damaging self perception. The wounds may have originated in misunderstandings that could have been resolved long ago, but somehow lingered on until it was too late, and too hard, to heal them. Sometimes it just isn’t possible to let go of such memories. There are just not the means to do so.

To make matters worse, the memories may have been dismissed, or deemed to be unimportant, by one or more of the parties involved. The wound inflicted was denied, so that the pain remained unvalidated. Unvalidated pain devalues all parties to a dispute, and leads to long term toxic relationships. In families, devaluing often takes the form of  ‘put downs’. In these contexts, ‘put downs’ are always about fear and denial and witness to deep and enduring unhappiness. They devalue the person’s pain and deny its validity, while also reinforcing the defences of the one who is doing the putting down, without allowing for the healing of their pain.

Difficult people, ourselves included, are ‘difficult’ because, on the whole, they are in pain, though they may not admit this even to themselves. And since, in the context of family, as well as in national life, all perceive the other as difficult, it follows that all are dealing with pain. Or perhaps they are not dealing with it because they cannot even acknowledge it.

There is a paradox here. When irritation bubbles to the surface as a result of an oft repeated action, word, or enduring habit, it might just be possible to experience, in the moment of irritation, or of being at odds with someone, the deepest compassion for the other party. A fleeting revelation occurs, even as the annoying words are spoken, and this revelation can be painful. It is seldom sought, but if the deadlock between two people is to be broken, such a revelation has to be desired. It might even re-trigger our own pain, but in being a trigger, it can elicit empathy which is a more demanding and a more subtle version of what otherwise might simply be called ‘understanding’.

Those who practice Buddhist meditation might describe empathy as mindfulness. For Christians, this means being mindful of our need for the grace which makes empathy possible, by validating our pain as it does the same for the other person. Grace is God’s free gift. It is given in love because God desires not just peace, but the full validation of persons which real peace both gives and requires. We cannot effect healing, or improve our relations with difficult people, without it.