Sunday, February 1, 2009

Dead End

“Corner a dog in a dead-end street and it will turn and bite” - Chinese Proverb



At a psychological level, all conflicts in this world stem from the feeling of one or all sides (usually all) that they have been cornered and have no choice but to react. This reaction then leads to and intensification of the feeling of being cornered on the other side, leading to more reaction, leading to more bad feelings, leading to more reaction, and so on. This will go on and on until one side devestates the other(s), one side is devestated, or all sides are devestated. Usually all sides get devestated in some senseless way. The result is a dead end for all, figuratively and literally.

What if all sides were to give each other some breathing room? As the saying goes, "throw the dog a bone." If we treat all sides as parts of a whole and each side makes a bit of compromise and contributes to the whole, the resulting sum of all the parts must by necessity equal to something greater than all the original pieces.

Easier said than done obviously because there is too much pride, too much pain, and too much history.

1 comment:

  1. How true - so many people see the other one as the threat. Too bad.

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