The Rub
Why Conflict is a Good Thing
“For good ideas and true innovation, you need human interaction, conflict, argument, debate.”
“Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.”
Every day, we find ourselves in some new conflict. And this is on top of whatever frictions are still being served up like leftovers from the days and weeks before. It could be an argument, a fumbled opportunity, a trying conversation, a misunderstanding at work, a confusing remark from your spouse, an important relationship still languishing under the weight of disagreements and distance that just won't reconcile. Maybe, it's just a thousand other deep-seated questions that refuse to tie up neatly.
And I Ran So Far Away
There is conflict everywhere we look, and in everything we do. And most of the time, we spend considerable effort trying not to deal with these incongruities. So many of us see conflict on the horizon and almost immediately turn away to go searching for a hole to jump into, in the hope that this hiding will relieve our tensions.
This avoidance does have some therapeutic value, even if this kind of therapy ultimately makes us worse. Hide long enough and the concentration of our problems dilutes. It dissipates across a wider internal landscape. Unfortunately, time, without work, perspective, and resolution, just turns down the volume, not unlike the way certain medications turn down the severity of pain but neglect to address the root cause.
With enough hiding, our conflicts may not get resolved, but they will quiet down, eventually to the point where we've missed any opportunity they originally held to catalyze change within us, and we toss aside, by omission, any value they possessed for reshaping the way we see and relate to the world.
The Value of Friction
Yes, friends, conflict is valuable. It is in many ways our most essential, driving force as human beings. Life itself is a sort of perpetual state of friction, a kind of messy, painful, ecstatic, maddening, beautiful, complex, elegant, absurd, and benevolent friction.
“Without friction we have oblivion. Without conflict we have existence as still life in a bottle. ”
The dynamism of life requires conflict. It needs friction to spark itself from potential to flame, from the inert to the vital. We live only because of power and revelation created by the force of individual objects, energies, and beings, sliding, scraping, careening, rubbing, opposing, caressing, inviting, and tumbling into one another. It is how we know ourselves, how we uncover additional layers of existence, and how we create life.
The friction of our differences, those encompassing the physical and spiritual, all that lies within the historical, cultural, psychological, emotional, and perceptual, reveals a need in us, the necessity to uncover what is yet unknown, solve what still evades us, and integrate, or at the very least, make some sense of the innumerable truths that seem inherently disparate to our own understanding of life's complexities. Without friction we have oblivion. Without conflict we have existence as still life in a bottle.
It is through the path of conflict that we uncover so many aspects of life. It leads us to create memorable works of art, to compose music or write songs, build great companies, raise our kids, pen various books, accomplish athletic feats, innovate toward solutions of all kinds, and realize life-saving medical breakthroughs. It is in working through conflict that we inspire others in teaching and mentorship. And in struggling together toward something greater than the sum of our individual parts, our conflicts strengthen our various relationships.
Fear and Control
So, then, if our daily negotiation with friction and conflict is such a necessary component of our growth and our ability to experience more of life, why is it so off-putting to us? Why do we war so mightily against it?
One of the main culprits here is our predilection for avoiding pain. This is an ancient mechanism in us, and useful from the mindset of survival. The avoidance of pain or great effort conserves energy. It keeps us farther from certain kinds of harm, from certain consequences brought about by a more direct style of engagement. Being the first out of the trench may be the stuff of heroes. But we also know that it is sometimes the stuff that makes you the most visible target on the horizon.
Avoiding conflict and its associated pain, affords us a protected view of things, albeit one much farther from the action. We get more silence, more time for analysis. It gives us, at least for a season, more rest. It enables us to protect, conserve, store, and survive another season.
We protect ourselves so much because dealing with conflict directly reminds us of two things, our mortality, in that it whispers to us again of the impermanence of things, something that all meaningful action does. And secondly, it reminds us of the dynamic incongruity and transitory nature of existence. Namely, that we cannot control every aspect of our lives.
Don’t Jump the Gun
There is a misunderstanding about the ways in which we struggle with conflict. We often think of it as an inherently bad thing, something that needs to cease as soon as possible. We see it as an open loop that needs to be closed. Be wary of this habit. Some questions need to be explored in depth. Some struggles, if resolved prematurely or buried too quickly, will come back to haunt us later down the road as something much worse.
Resolution and intimacy are powerful things. But diminishing the importance of a conflict, rushing its resolution, or ignoring it for the sake of keeping things pleasant, only makes us despise one another, lose respect for ourselves, and weaken our desire to take responsibility for our own actions.
A Quiet Destruction
There is a violence that some of us commit regularly, a brand of destruction that erases the density of life through silent resignation. It is the violence of passivity and avoidance, and the destruction that follows in the wake of those who've sworn an unconscious allegiance to manufactured calmness and forced ease. For those who master it, the casualties they inflict are innumerable.
I've known a few individuals like this, those who, while they possess many good qualities, refuse to accept the essential nature of conflict in their lives. They want it calm all the time. And they ignore a problem until it's right in their face. At which time they'll make rash decisions to decrease their discomfort quickly, or blame others for their pain.
The saddest part about this, is that it's impossible to develop intimacy or greater understanding outside of the work we do in conflict. Where there are differences of any kind there will be conflict. These differences were meant to keep us curious, keep us coming back for more. They were intended to fuel our growth, to challenge our blind spots and assumed limitations.
Intimacy, wisdom, understanding, these aren't built by the immediate dismissal of conflict. They are fashioned by our exploration, by the volley and return we do with one another as we work through all the lines that don't run parallel, and in wrestling with the physical and spiritual mechanisms of an unresolved but constantly resolving existence.
Crank It Up
On the other side of the coin, there are those who carry drama and conflict like a badge. And we can see it coming. Most of us know at least a few individuals who are forever itching to start something. You know, those men and women who seem ever-ready to open up greater conflict in the lives around them, to force themselves in and shake up the room no matter the situation.
They are perpetually intense and love to argue about everything. Often, they are compelling because of this volatile energy, especially for those already attracted to the heightened sense of reality brought on by melodramatic individuals. But these conflict-obsessed men and women are no more capable of inspiring healthy growth or building lasting connections than someone who avoids conflict completely.
Theirs is its own kind of avoidance. Some hide in the shadows, others in the light, as they keep us half blind with the intensity of their lantern. These folks aren't interested in a greater understanding of the potential of struggle and conflict to unearth more of life. They are only interested in the misdirection and control that frequent bouts of conflict creates.
They want that unique high that only comes from keeping everything and everyone off balance and in a state of trembling all the time. It is friction for the sake of disturbance, and the creation of discomfort in others so the one initiating can self-protect against the immensity and complexity inside others and within the world at large.
The Nature of Conflict
Those who understand what conflict is really for have little need to run. Nor do they want to increase it needlessly. They understand that while conflict isn't the ultimate state of human beings (which is a surpassing peace, boundless curiosity, perpetual gratitude, ever-growing connection with others, and a joy that cannot be suppressed), it is one of the most powerful vehicles to get there. And they refuse to waste its potential by slipping into either of two extremes, the worship of conflict or the self-imposed ignorance of the very same.
Used correctly and respected for its ability to untie the bonds of misunderstanding, conflict that we directly engage with, leads us not toward greater friction, but toward a new revelation of peace. It is a peace that silences the kinds of conflicts that have no ability to bring us life, the ones designed merely to alienate. Yet, this superb brand of peace knows that it can only be sustained when we don't turn away from the conflicts that feed our soul.
Our Bodies Like Matches for the Striking
Uniquely, one place we can look to for a bold image of positive conflict by way of friction is within love, and specifically, sex. They are superb examples of the innate power of struggle to work not against but for our benefit. Sex is a kind of unspoken language between two people, one that often says a great deal more in its silence than normal conversations do in days or weeks.
In sex, specifically in monogamy, with one we love deeply and have dedicated ourselves to, we are continually opening and closing, blooming and folding. Neither person knows exactly what the other wants or needs at that moment, on that day. Neither completely understands even what they need or want themselves. And because the healing and the answers sex holds for us are designed to communicate more ably and directly with the unconscious mind, we never know exactly what it is going to access, shake up, and mend.
“Sex that is a direct extension of selfless and affirming love may be the ultimate physical example of benevolent conflict.”
This unresolved conflict between need and fulfillment sparks the fires between us. Every touch, every taste, every new corner and curve explored, every nuance of flesh and spirit sought and found, lost, and rediscovered, shapes who we are as individuals and as lovers and friends, teaching us things, not merely about our relationship to the one we love, but about our own perceptions of reality.
Sex that is a direct extension of selfless and affirming love may be the ultimate physical example of benevolent conflict. It is a resolution forever sought. And no matter how exquisite the climax or liberating the aftermath, it is inside the center of it all, the insatiable curiosity, the tug of war and tumble of our intense pursuit and the action of our choices, that we discover most about ourselves and about each other.
The friction of sex changes us. The climax only solidifies what we've found during our time in the secret places. And then, with a wink and a grin, it rewards us with something extra for our efforts. And all this, a tangible example of what we think, feel, and long to communicate within. All of it, a physical extension of our spiritual bond with the one our heart loves.
Of course, love, then, for those who understand it best, is not merely a vehicle for comfort and self-fulfillment, but a gateway toward spiritual growth, moral refinement, and for sowing the very best of what we have to offer inside another's life. In real love, we don't simply diminish our discomfort with existence, we learn how to reveal to one another, new realms, new pleasures, and a kind of maturity only available by walking hand-in-hand through different, more life-giving kinds of unrest.
Allowances and Invitations
When we begin to understand the true nature of conflict, we see that it isn't just a stumbling block in our path, a stone to trip us up on our way to somewhere else. It is often the path itself. Conflict, in this way, is not a wall keeping us from something, but a corridor we pass through so we can at last arrive in the place we'd always longed to be, the one we could see from a distance but never knew how to find the route.
Many of our struggles, many of our unresolved conflicts are only holding us back because we've given them permission to do so. We've relinquished our innate call to engage with our struggles. We trade this blessing for temporal comforts and fillers that numb us just enough so that we forget for a while about an old image that haunts many, and fills some with joy. It is the image of the gates of time and opportunity slowly closing before us.
In Closing: Through is Better than Around
I won't make the claim that navigating conflict is a simple matter. It isn't. And some conflicts in this life can push us toward levels of tension and stress we didn't realize humans could touch. But even for conflicts on that level, especially for ones that reach these heights, they will only worsen the more we try to sidestep them.
Working through our struggles actively, on our own, and especially with others, takes some growing up, no matter what age we currently find ourselves. When we turn away from conflict, we allow it to transform into a beast that loves to circle back around and take bites out of us. Yet, choosing to navigate conflict directly, with grace and decisiveness, begets the refinement of our character. It causes our problems to shrink, while our confidence increases.
Whenever you feel that common default rising to the surface, the one that tells you to close your eyes in the presence of conflict and wait it out until the pain subsides, refuse its entrance. Instead, invite the work of conflict in, with a mind ready to listen and learn, and a heart seeking the resolution and courage that only comes by facing our dragons.