Unconditional and fearless in impossible times

Not since elementary school's duck-and-cover drills have I felt such a sense of dread. Duck-and-cover was the public school program that prepared us all for an "atomic attack." It was a time in my young life when I learned about insomnia and chronic worry, usually in the dark of the night. Usually counting the decades and years left in my life. The Bogeyman was my night-time companion from his place in the far corner of the living room, which I could see through the hallway from my bed. 

Now I merely worry about whether or not my grandkids will ever have a decent world to live in. If they'll ever feel safe. If they'll always be subjected to hate and cruelty. We are at this moment watching a war unfold in The Ukraine. Cruel and barbaric treatment human to human is what we need to cancel, not each other.

I long for a world where we have stopped letting our disagreements with each other define our relationships--where conflicts don't become the relationship. How about instead we commit to staying in relationship with each other while we talk through each conflict? What if we started with the idea that conflict is tough so we commit to our relationship as THE MOST important aspect of the conversation?

For every family that has survived COVID, we have been forced to stay in relationship while we hashed out opposite views about the COVID pandemic. For every conversation, outcomes have fallen somewhere between opposite views.

• Pandemic denier vs. pandemic believer
• Choose new low risk behaviors vs. live pre-pandemic status quo
• Choose to wear a mask vs. never wear a mask
• Choose vaccine vs. no vaccine
• Choose testing vs. no testing
• Choose to go back to pre-pandemic socializing vs. continue isolation

Some of us were good at it from the start. Some of us have learned through practice. Some of us haven't fully realized our power. And some of us struggle to find the composure to have a win-win conversation.

But I cannot help but believe there's a reason there is more of an allegiance to home and family and self than to one's job post-pandemic. We all found some of our soul in cathartic conversations with the people we love about life and death, about the necessary choices we make, and our right to do so--some of us had conversations unlike any we'd had in the past. 

If you've been afraid to try, but aspire to, you can place your trust in unconditional and fearless. That starts with the belief we all get to have say over our own "boat." We regard viewpoints out loud. When we speak, we speak kindly and fearlessly about what we need and why. 

No need to be fancy . . . "Our relationship is more important than any conflict between us. Let's put our heads together about how we solve this difference."

I'm not naive, I realize we'll all be letting go of our need to judge and be right, and our need to be defensive. And it takes practice. But it's our ability to speak on behalf of our needs and wants without making other people wrong that has the power to lead us out of this dark time. 

Differentiation is simple, rarely easy, 

and tonic for the soul.