Conflict! Pushing us outside our views to see others
En route for an added widespread ground
To conquer fears, become better communicators,
To understand others, growing out of our comfort zone.
The word ‘conflict’ sends an unpleasant interpretation and negative thoughts in the minds of people. Not even the hardiest leaders like to hear ‘conflict’. But this is necessary in our lives. Conflict brings out the untapped or hidden resourcefulness in us. It gives us a sense of belonging, makes us creative, avail us the opportunity to innovate, question issues and look for ways to get out of the conundrum. Therefore, it is not a false claim when Veronica Roth said, “If there’s no conflict, there are no stories worth telling – or reading.”
The question is where do we garner values from? The answer should be that nothing changes in this world without conflict. No one succeeds in life without one form of mistake or the other made along the line. This is the reason we must know that someone who made mistakes in twenty roads knows twenty roads but someone who made mistakes in one road only know one road. The former has a better experience of life and stories to tell than the person who only discovered just one road.
Life experiences shape us. Diversity is our conflict. It enriches us; it also brings out that which we can offer. It leads us to a better life, propelling our personal and social quest for growth. A life without conflicts would be boring and not worthy to live. Even in academia, there are always conflicts for new research. These conflicts are in sciences, arts, humanities. We have invented technology, written books, experimented, innovated… because of conflicts within us. Let’s agree that in the presence of conflict, whether harmonious or destructive conflicts, those involved have one goal: those involved are doing their best to come up with solutions to achieve their organizational goals. As they thrive for the goals, they do everything within their reach to conquer human frailty in order not to fester.
Conflicts make us better individuals; they mould us to understand the world we are living in better. We don’t really need to be in a state of war before we agree that we are facing conflicts. There are situations we argue for or against opposing viewpoints. The conflicts in our families, in our workplaces, in our places of worship, in politics and so on, shape us. We have our different problems. Intricate relationships, unsolved heartache, qualms regarding faith, or dishonest desires, among others, are parts of our individual conflicts. We mature through these.
Let us understand that harmony in our existence is not the absence of conflicts. We must understand that conflicts through harmony leads to positive change, hence we can say that harmony is not static but dynamic. The dynamism of harmony leads us to scrapping certain values for a better change. We open our hands and minds for this change. We have had cases where tremendous innovation came through revolution. We cannot rule out the fact that we have seen bloody revolutions that brought about positive change to a people or a country. We have to also agree that the blood we spill is not always the blood of human beings, but the blood of ideas, the blood of blindness, the blood of not thinking outside the box, the blood of laziness, the blood of dim-wittedness, and so many other bad bloods that draw us back.
As we spilled the bad blood, we have seen the revolution of the Internet, transportation revolution, online marketing, mailing, news dissemination and many others. The enlightenment we are enjoying today is a resultant of battle with the conflicts in us. We are still on it, battling with media ideas, how to shape our world beyond the 21st Century. We are seeing that conflicts foster creativity, encourage a deeper investigation of our different lives; where we disagree to agree.