Whose Life Is It Anyway

To begin with, I teach conflict resolution. This means, I get to learn more than I can possibly teach - with that fact being established, as students, we get to learn about the Johari Window - the Arena, the Blind Spot, the Facade and the Unknown before we move on to understand Conflict resolution strategies like Withdrawal, Forcing, Compromising, Reconciliation and Confrontation and further learn techniques to effectively use during conflict resolution.

And now for the confession... In real life, I suck at resolving conflicts especially in my personal life. Very often I choose the weakest technique to resolve conflicts - I bow out - I often agree to accept that that person with whom I have a conflict, does not even exist in my life anymore - in conflict resolution language, it is what one calls 'withdrawal'. 

This often oscillates with my otherwise persistent tendency by nature to break things down - something they do not usually teach in conflict resolution classes. Breaking things to a shatter being my favourite and often familiar pass time in a world where I take pleasure in wrecking things up in the backdrop of chaos and confusion. These days, I have suspended this activity since it is financially too taxing to be engaged in such a pleasure - with wife and kids and the recurring expenses you see.  

Now to the point. Very often, I get to see people choose everything else and everything less to resolve conflicts rather than choose the highest and best strategy in conflict resolution - confrontation. Confrontation is not about breaking someone's nose or to humiliate another with facts and truth. It is about collaborating and reaching a certain level of honesty to let each other know what is bothering each other and in attempting to understand the issues through each other's eyes. Psychiatric Social Workers, Counselors and other related professionals learn to use techniques to uncover and address hidden and potential threats during conflict resolution exercises and help people reconcile more effectively in a therapeutic environment.

One of the issues I find couples facing these days is in the area of trying to resolve conflicts in the presence of family and friends - usually an audience who further flame their senseless revelations and displaced excitement. Shamelessly these couples often wash their dirty linen in public and from boardroom to bedroom issues, share their issues loud and clear for the whole world to hear. This very stunt, they hardly realize, is what gets them socially butted, excluded, isolated and the reason why no one wants them to be part of any social gathering where a certain level of civilized behaviour is expected - something that cannot be expected from these kinds. The very ego of their's that they try to defend through these quarrels is the one that shatters at the end of these ugly domestic stunts - which is almost like spitting against the wind and getting it on the face in return.

Friends and families who try to intervene to resolve these ugly spats, may come in with the best intention; yet, they are not professional help providers. Finding an effective help provider is as crucial as seeking help from one.
Ideally, there are a few things that must be kept within four walls in any intimate relationship - things like discussions about finance, sex and confrontations. With city walls becoming thin and walls that divide apartments becoming thinner, people instead of becoming more conscious, have become more disgusting and better dis-reputed as they engage in unrestricted, uncontrolled and instinctive display of their mediocre upbringing not just within these walls yet also go on to tear each other's walls and face on the virtual world too - displaying their skills at how unfit they are to belong to a more controlled, conscious and civilized world to a bigger and silently judging audience who are far more disgusted than entertained by the couple's acts of immaturity in the meantime. 

Some people are born into families with bad examples or are themselves bad examples in their families -  there are ever too many excuses and ever too many people to blame when one does not get to see the log in his/her own eyes. At the end of the day, "Whose life is it anyway?!"