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What Must Change?
Typically we assume people are looking for solutions when they find themselves in conflict. I say that if you take an account of how people go about obtaining those solutions the preferred solution in a remarkably high percentage of cases is that human beings believe others outside of them should change! No kidding listen to yourself the next time something in your family, company or church needs to change for you. I have found this to be truer in the “Church” than secularly and in my experience, it is powerfully connected to assuming that the “Church” has the answer and therefore it is those on the outside that have the problem. Unwittingly, this fundamental assumption and its companion attitudes catalyze the continuance of what we say we really don’t want.
What if there is something in our conflicts with others individually as well as socially we want more than solutions? Is it possible that our conflicts individually and collectively share the same root causes? Further, what if we both as individuals and as a body are by unconscious design misunderstanding the causes of our conflicts and thus ignorantly perpetuating the very problems we say we are dedicated to resolve?
How many of us are even able to walk in the light in this way? (By suspending our need to be right about our solutions and the thinking that generated them, long enough to investigate them the way we would want others to investigate their own thinking.) And if we are unable to even challenge ourselves in this way, how can we expect to ever resolve the problems our own thinking creates?
If thinking is as powerful as we culturally acknowledge it is, what really needs to change? And where can you go to have these kinds of conversations?
Dan,
In recent years as I have engaged in conversations with individuals who have diverse world views, it has strengthened my faith and reduced my certainty about what is and isn’t of God. Too often I see a lack of openmindedness on the part of professing Christians. It feels to me that such attitudes are often based on hubris or fear.
I like your passion for conversation. From my experience in life I have found open, honest conversations where mutual empathy exists are healing, encouraging, energizing and a source of learning and growth. Conversely, I have experienced times when the lack of conversation in my own life has isolated me emotionally. Manfred F.R. Kets deVries at Insead did a fascination interview with Harvard Business Review about how executives beclome emotionally isolated in life. There is a article I wrote with Jason Pankau at http://www.epluribuspartners.com entitled “Leading in the Power of Community” on this topic too.
I liked what you said when you spoke at the New Canaan Society about “fearing the order rather than the chaos.” I knew exactly what you meant because I have been in cultures where real conversations don’t take place because they are viewed as too chaotic.
Thanks for conversing on this.
I can relate to Michael, “lack of conversation in my own life has isolated me emotionally.” This conversation reminds me that when I make changes from the inside out, usually the outcome is people respond to me differently and I have less stress and have used less emotional energy to resolve my problem. When I look for others to change, I then have to use much more emotional energy and become stressed and sometimes depressed. Looking for the solution in outside things usually causes me to manipulate and control…then I have to keep that energy going to keep up the illusion that I am in the solution…hmmmm..did that make sense???
“A change is needed here!!!!
When I look at the words “change” and “needed”, those words imply I’m making an interpretation about someone, or something or some event. I’ve made a judgement. It might be right or it might be wrong. It might be good or it might be bad. Either way, I’ve made a judgement. There is a need and there is a change to be initiated.
As the judge, I, by default, am setting myself apart, and maybe even above, whatever person, place or thing that is in my courtroom of scrutinty..
Gosh, I’m getting pretty lofty here.
Anyways, let’s pretend that in life “change” isn’t really what is “needed”, EVER?
Now if no change is needed ever, that means I never get to be a judge.
OK, these are the two new premises for life we’re going to operate by:
1) There is no “need for change”
2) We are no longer judges
In light of these two new premises we just made up, from now on, 1)What do we get to do?; and, 2)Who do we get to be? in our daily encounters with people, places, and events?
(At first I think we’re going to be very surprised at all the judgement conversations we have going on in our brains.)
Hi Dan
You asked:
“What if there is something in our conflicts with others individually as well as socially we want more than solutions? Is it possible that our conflicts individually and collectively share the same root causes? Further, what if we both as individuals and as a body are by unconscious design misunderstanding the causes of our conflicts and thus ignorantly perpetuating the very problems we say we are dedicated to resolve?”
I’d like to venture that a common root cause for our corportate conflict is that we all have this powerful attribute of God built into us that doesn’t get much air time. The attribute is:
our words are profoundly important to us;
more profound than the importance of our words is our desire to be heard;
more profound yet is the passion we have that someone will love us enough to hear our words AND to take our words seriously AND actually take the time to contemplate what we are saying, and then act on it.
Finally, all of the above would lead to the promise and commitment of being in a relationship that would never end.