Resolving Conflicts

Nobody likes conflict. But most of the time, we fail to avoid ourselves from one. Why is this keep happening? The reason why conflicts arise is because humans have the one thing that keep defending ourselves in all the wrong way. This is what we called “ego”. Ego is defined as an inflated feeling of pride in superiority to others. People have different levels of ego and the higher it gets the more likely they are to be involved in a conflict.

When conflicts occur, the best thing to do is just to understand the situation get it over with or apologize and move on. But the presence of ego avoid self from being the person who is guilty because the feel of superiority towards the other person. The greater ego will of course belong to the person who is not guilty in the first place as they feel that they deserve justice and the other person deserve a punishment. But just because the other party is guilty, the chances that they let off their ego 100% are a bit subjective to assess but usually doesn’t reach to such level. This is the common situation. Most of the time, the one not guilty will do everything they can to prove of their innocence and to lay out the offences of the other party. On the other hand the other party will come up with all the excuses to defend themselves.

Accusing, lying, harsh words, bad perception, gossips, to some extent even physical fight, all of them usually happen in the process of resolving a conflict. Isn’t it painful? It’s painful to just think about it, let alone having to undergo the whole process. Have we ever thought for once, just let those ego slide off and resolve conflicts as simple as it gets. Understand the whole situation, put ourselves in the shoes of the other party even though if we are innocent and apologize where needed. There is no doubt that in a conflict, both party have some degree of offences, because if there is no offence from one party the conflict will not arise in the first place. Even so little, usually it exists. Therefore it’s a good practice to always apologize to each other in the end.

Another good practice is to blame ourselves first and see what come out of it. Actually to think more deeply, blaming ourselves is much easier than blaming others, especially if our aim is to avoid conflict rather than creating it. We cannot change other people but we can try to change ourselves. When we blame others, how frequent would they accept the blame and improve themselves? Usually what happen is they will blame us again, we blame them, they blame that and this and that....the lame "blame game" begins… when does it stop? Nobody knows…

But because we are blinded by ego, making ourselves guilty when we feel that we are not is not that easy. Honestly, there is always a way to blame ourselves in any situation. When something bad happen to us, we can just think that we are not careful or when other people betray us, we can think that we have not portrayed our good values enough to others. Find a way, be creative. Once we let off that ego by blaming ourselves first, our mind will be cleared off the clouds and rains that make us so angry in the first place. Surely its painful to blame ourselves and being the guilty one, so we need to be careful when we hurt ourselves. The one to ask for support is God, not to be in a state of depression. Therefore, it is actually more calming to blame ourselves rather than to keep the fire on, burn ourselves with the hatred. When we really think about it, even though its painful being sad when we are gulity, it’s not as bad as the pain from anger when we are innocent. Sadness may be tears of rains with repentance, but anger is just thunders and fires with hatred.  Which would you choose? But if we are the kind of person who got easily depress there is another good way to solve conflicts.

Sometimes some people would not let go the other person that easily for some understandable reasons. For example if the other person’s offences are too painful for them, the other person needs to learn an important lesson from the situation, or when it involves crimes that require justice. The definition of how serious an offence is differs from person to person. As humans we have to understand that people have different views and perception. We should never think the other person was overreacting without fully understanding their situation. It would be unfair to judge other people’s feeling base on our own.

In times when we feel like it’s too difficult to forgive and forget, the best thing to do is to make the other party truly understand our situation at the same time trying to understand theirs. This is the best thing to do. When we let them know everything, let them know how we feel and how much pain was involved, if the other party is a good person, they can understand how much forgiveness need to be sought. At the same time they (the victim) must also understand the situation from the guilty part to be able to fully forgive them. 

Even in the most crucial of conflicts, if there is a need to want to make peace, just try it this way. There is no need to undergo the whole process of a painful conflict when we can actually learn to understand each other better and celebrate our diversities. 

in the case of the Global conflict of the Palestine issue,I can however, see that there is only 1 party that is guilty, and that is the Israel...I guess this conflict occur because the other party is hardly human at all!they are worst than the devils!