"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing." - Anais Nin
A friend of mine posted this quote on Facebook yesterday. Seems fitting with all that's going through my head these days on the subject of love, and how it has been lost.
In college I studied Conflict Resolution: Mediation and Negotiation. We would examine all of the best methods to ensure that people would participate in their own collective resolution. I was taught to hate the word "compromise," as it instantly evokes a negative response: "Why should I have to give anything up when *s/he* did _____, to cause the problem in the first place."
We all believe in our righteous justifications for the ways in which we act negatively upon the world. We all struggle with trying to do the best we can muster in any given situation, and sometimes feel provoked beyond our comfort levels. At times, these provocations come directly from another individual, while other times they are more symbolic, as in expectations we either assume for ourselves, or those which are placed upon us externally. Confrontations rarely go well in the immediacy of the moment. Even with the best of intentions, confrontations frequently cue our most dramatic defense mechanisms, and skills of deflection. It is the job of the mediator/negotiator to understand these provocations and potential reactions, and to mindfully guide the parties through the often emotionally explosive process. For obvious reasons, it can be a challenge, at best.
Having said all of this, I tend to beat myself up when I can not put my own emotions in check while trying to communicate about my feelings having been hurt by a loved one. It leaves e wishing that I had a third neutral party present at all times to walk us through the active listening, mirroring, and so on... Oye! Or only surround myself with people that have this experiential knowledge base. Unrealistic!
Mediation can be both heartbreaking and an intensely healing process. A gifted mediator can squelch power plays, and redirect the parties' attention to the irreducible issues at hand. The mediator's role is to suss out all of the core problems, and understand the how's and why's of each members' actions and reactions related to those root issues. Then, and only then, that mediator has to prove her/his neutrality to all active participants to earn their trust, and hopefully calculate common denominators amongst group members. Once you can have everyone focus on these commonalities, it can be a smidge easier to work backwards from there, asking how we, collectively, can achieve these threads of a common goal.
The aim is to pull people out of their opposing corners, where they may have succumb to combative, defensive tactics in order to shield their vulnerabilities and Achilles' heel. (The image of a dog fight runs through my mind: two dogs facing each other, bracing themselves for the fight to ensue; as opposed to two dogs walking gleefully next to one another, embarking on a journey together... Yes, I am a dog walker...) But the same applies to people.
At what point to we stop joyously walking next to one another on our common path, and decide to rip our partners a new one?
Mediation is different from therapy in that it has specific goals, end points and structures to achieve those end points. All members at the table have to participate to achieve the very specific, plausible resolution. Where as, in therapy, the goal is usually more vague: "to feel better." But what does that mean? How does one get there from here? And how long will it take, 50 minutes intervals at a time?
I chose to study Conflict Resolution because the spectrum of human emotion fascinated me. To be able to closely examine the human psyche, but in a way that doesn't just quantify it, but rather, delve into those trenches with the hope of building a way out *collaboratively.* Maybe it's just the idealist in me. Or maybe having had my own fucked up childhood, I'm used to the chaos. I don't know.
But I experience the loss all the more when I am in love, and feel the love slipping away. Knowing that most divorced couples once felt like their former significant other was the answer to their dreams, it's a sobering realization. At one point, they were probably even smitten about this person whom they can no longer stand. It is perplexing to consider the loss and the fractures that settle in to the places where love use to reside. Reading so much philosophy, psychology, history, fiction, lyrics to pop songs, even screenplays – love is the single greatest motivator in existence. And conversely, the loss of love is the most crushing experience we can endure, testing our very fragile moral fibers. Even after thousands of years of writing on this universal topic, we are no closer to "solving" the mystery, and "curing" ourselves from our romantic ailments. (Well, at least I don't feel so alone...)
If Anais Nin's statement is true – how do we prevent the blindness, the errors and betrayals? How do we keep love healthy and self-healing? How can we protect it from the storms, nourish it again and again into infinity, and polish away the cloudiness that may appear from time to time? How do we love love itself???
In college I studied Conflict Resolution: Mediation and Negotiation. We would examine all of the best methods to ensure that people would participate in their own collective resolution. I was taught to hate the word "compromise," as it instantly evokes a negative response: "Why should I have to give anything up when *s/he* did _____, to cause the problem in the first place."
We all believe in our righteous justifications for the ways in which we act negatively upon the world. We all struggle with trying to do the best we can muster in any given situation, and sometimes feel provoked beyond our comfort levels. At times, these provocations come directly from another individual, while other times they are more symbolic, as in expectations we either assume for ourselves, or those which are placed upon us externally. Confrontations rarely go well in the immediacy of the moment. Even with the best of intentions, confrontations frequently cue our most dramatic defense mechanisms, and skills of deflection. It is the job of the mediator/negotiator to understand these provocations and potential reactions, and to mindfully guide the parties through the often emotionally explosive process. For obvious reasons, it can be a challenge, at best.
Having said all of this, I tend to beat myself up when I can not put my own emotions in check while trying to communicate about my feelings having been hurt by a loved one. It leaves e wishing that I had a third neutral party present at all times to walk us through the active listening, mirroring, and so on... Oye! Or only surround myself with people that have this experiential knowledge base. Unrealistic!
Mediation can be both heartbreaking and an intensely healing process. A gifted mediator can squelch power plays, and redirect the parties' attention to the irreducible issues at hand. The mediator's role is to suss out all of the core problems, and understand the how's and why's of each members' actions and reactions related to those root issues. Then, and only then, that mediator has to prove her/his neutrality to all active participants to earn their trust, and hopefully calculate common denominators amongst group members. Once you can have everyone focus on these commonalities, it can be a smidge easier to work backwards from there, asking how we, collectively, can achieve these threads of a common goal.
The aim is to pull people out of their opposing corners, where they may have succumb to combative, defensive tactics in order to shield their vulnerabilities and Achilles' heel. (The image of a dog fight runs through my mind: two dogs facing each other, bracing themselves for the fight to ensue; as opposed to two dogs walking gleefully next to one another, embarking on a journey together... Yes, I am a dog walker...) But the same applies to people.
At what point to we stop joyously walking next to one another on our common path, and decide to rip our partners a new one?
Mediation is different from therapy in that it has specific goals, end points and structures to achieve those end points. All members at the table have to participate to achieve the very specific, plausible resolution. Where as, in therapy, the goal is usually more vague: "to feel better." But what does that mean? How does one get there from here? And how long will it take, 50 minutes intervals at a time?
I chose to study Conflict Resolution because the spectrum of human emotion fascinated me. To be able to closely examine the human psyche, but in a way that doesn't just quantify it, but rather, delve into those trenches with the hope of building a way out *collaboratively.* Maybe it's just the idealist in me. Or maybe having had my own fucked up childhood, I'm used to the chaos. I don't know.
But I experience the loss all the more when I am in love, and feel the love slipping away. Knowing that most divorced couples once felt like their former significant other was the answer to their dreams, it's a sobering realization. At one point, they were probably even smitten about this person whom they can no longer stand. It is perplexing to consider the loss and the fractures that settle in to the places where love use to reside. Reading so much philosophy, psychology, history, fiction, lyrics to pop songs, even screenplays – love is the single greatest motivator in existence. And conversely, the loss of love is the most crushing experience we can endure, testing our very fragile moral fibers. Even after thousands of years of writing on this universal topic, we are no closer to "solving" the mystery, and "curing" ourselves from our romantic ailments. (Well, at least I don't feel so alone...)
If Anais Nin's statement is true – how do we prevent the blindness, the errors and betrayals? How do we keep love healthy and self-healing? How can we protect it from the storms, nourish it again and again into infinity, and polish away the cloudiness that may appear from time to time? How do we love love itself???
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