Day 23: Look at Conflicts With New Eyes
The most annoying thing about being around other people is that sometimes, other human beings are the worst. Really, truly, the most annoying, frustrating things on earth. And it’s not even their fault. Sometimes they just think unimportant things are really meaningful, or they completely ignore the deep slights they have caused us. Just the other day, someone asked me to drop something off at dinnertime. At dinnertime! When I am busy with my kids and everyone is grumpy and I’ve already changed into my pajamas and what kind of a monster could think that was ok? Or, once, someone totally misinterpreted my completely innocent joke and it became a thing that we all had to talk through when I didn’t even mean anything by it. What is their problem?
When I have these seemingly stupid conflicts where either someone’s insensitivity or oversensitivity seem ridiculously outsized, I always have to remind myself to take a step back. As living meaning-makers, human beings will apply meaning to everything. We’re like a suburban mom who just got a label-maker and suddenly finds herself labelling the fridge and dishwasher. But those meanings that we give things aren’t universally understood. The meaning of dinnertime to me is very different to a lot of people. To me, dinnertime is the transition from busy day into family time. We get fed and start to wind down for the day. For another person, dinnertime might be just another hour, albeit one in which you get to eat.
When we look at things through a values lens, though, we start to see where the conflict is. For me, keeping dinnertime peaceful reflects my values of organization, mealtime as connection time, and self-care in that eating food in peace helps me make healthier choices. For another person, their values of flexibility and spontaneity might mean that the best moment to do something is right now, whenever that may be.
Looking at it that way, it doesn’t look like such a big conflict after all. Maybe they can come pick up the thing. Or that flexibility will give them understanding for my inability to come right now. When we’ve taken time to build strong connections, we can’t let something as common as a misunderstanding get in the way of our friendships. And we can rely on those connections to withstand the natural storms of life.
When have you gotten in a disagreement just to realize it was an unintentional values mismatch? How did it work out?
