It truly frustrates me to see just how much we've normalized conflict these days. It's everywhere and it seems to be unavoidable--from politics to sports to entertainment to relationships to people struggling to get rights, conflict seems to be the driving force behind our society these days. After all, conflict gets you more news coverage than simply doing what you're supposed to do. Conflict grabs headlines, while simply doing our jobs well gets us very little recognition; imposing our own ideas on how things should be gets us more attention than letting others be as they are and accepting them and their lifestyles.
Constant conflict is a sign of a lack of acceptance. We don't want things to be as they are--we want them changed. "Those people shouldn't be living that way" is an invitation to conflict from the people who are going to defend those people's rights to live as they wish. Many people see acceptance as a weakness, but it really is one of the strongest ways of living our lives that we have. When I accept you just as you are, then there's no need for me to start any conflict with you because I don't see any need for you to change--not your lifestyle, not your sexual orientation, not your mind. You are as you are, and that's fine as long as you're not harming others.
We can disagree with each other--we can even have arguments about things we believe and still get along very well. Unfortunately, though, we tend to see conflict now as a sign that we aren't getting along, that this person really isn't a friend if we don't see eye-to-eye about immigration or the Women's World Cup. Because so much of our conflict these days has to do with judgment, we all turn our defense mechanisms to high as soon as someone disagrees with us because we don't want to be judged, and rightly so. Judgment is a way of telling someone that they're right or wrong, even though virtually none of us are truly in a position to be able to judge other people. We can most certainly disagree with them, but the words "judge not and you shall not be judged" are rather timeless, though these days we may need to change them to "I'll judge you but you'd better not judge me."
This constant conflict is making it difficult to simply relax and enjoy life, to get the most out of each day that we live. It's difficult to relax when we don't know when someone else is going to judge us and criticize us for our actions or our beliefs. It's hard to enjoy the day when we have no idea what the next source of conflict is going to show up--and it may show up on social media, where we're criticized in front of potentially the entire world. How many posts on Facebook telling us that this person has done something horrible have turned out to be completely false, yet we've passed them on and helped to perpetuate the conflict with a simple click of a mouse?
It's no wonder that our young people are both hyper-critical and hyper-sensitive these days. To them, conflict is the norm they've grown up witnessing, and it's only a matter of time before it affects them, too--if it hasn't already. While they tend to put on brave faces and shrug off the fact that they face attacks on social media if they're not careful, and criticism from many people who have come to view conflict as "normal," and potential conflict about every choice they may make from politics to clothing that they wear, the truth is that this wears them down and makes it very difficult for them to truly live their lives fully.
It's difficult to write about this topic in a truly cohesive way because it's one that deserves a book or three, not just a few paragraphs. I believe that my main point is that our world needs more of us to pull back from the conflict, to allow others to be just what they are without judging or criticizing them. We can be that "safe person" to whom others can come when they want a word of encouragement or a listening ear instead of more conflict and stress. And we can teach our young people that while conflict does happen, it's not necessarily as important as we make it out to be. We don't all have to jump into every argument with our own perspective; we don't need to try to make others believe what we believe.
Our world has enough conflict. While we don't want to ignore injustice when we see it, let us pick and choose our battles so that we're involved in that conflict only when absolutely necessary, only when we're defending the rights of those who are losing their rights, only when helping others who are unable to help themselves. Let us accept more and criticize less, and let us be the beacons of peace and understanding that others can depend on when they need some peace and understanding in their lives. We can live fully in a world full of constant conflict, but doing so requires a constant series of decisions on our part, and a constant commitment to contributing to the positive energy of the world rather than the negative.
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