Dangerous Love: Transforming Fear and Conflict at Home, at Work, and in the World 9781523089772, 9781523089789, 9781523089796, 9781523089802, 1523089776

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DANGEROUS LOVE

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DANGEROUS LOVE Transforming Fear and Conflict at Home, at Work, and in the World for printing on spine of paper cover or jacket

for foil stamping on spine of cloth cover

Logos for BK NO-AGENDA books

CHAD FORD

Logos can be any color, but any one instance of the logo should be all the same color.

for title page

Berrett–Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Berrett–Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Berrett–Koehler Publishers, Inc.

Berrett–Koehler Publishers, Inc. www.bkconnection.com

Berrett–Koehler Publishers, Inc. www.bkconnection.com

Berrett–Koehler Publishers, Inc. www.bkconnection.com

Berrett–Koehler Publishers, Inc. www.bkconnection.com

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for back of paper cover, or back flap of jacket

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Dangerous Love Copyright © 2020 by Chad Ford All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. 1333 Broadway, Suite 1000 Oakland, CA 94612-1921 Tel: (510) 817-2277, Fax: (510) 817-2278 www.bkconnection.com Ordering information for print editions Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the “Special Sales Department” at the Berrett-Koehler address above. Individual sales. Berrett-Koehler publications are available through most bookstores. They can also be ordered directly from Berrett-Koehler: Tel: (800) 9292929; Fax: (802) 864-7626; www.bkconnection.com Orders for college textbook/course adoption use. Please contact BerrettKoehler: Tel: (800) 929-2929; Fax: (802) 864-7626. Distributed to the U.S. trade and internationally by Penguin Random House Publisher Services. Berrett-Koehler and the BK logo are registered trademarks of Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. First Edition Paperback print edition ISBN 978-1-5230-8977-2 PDF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-8978-9 IDPF e-book ISBN 978-1-5230-8979-6 Digital audio ISBN 978-1-5230-8980-2 2020-1 Cover design: Dan Tesser, Studio Carnelian

To Amanda, Makena, TK, Emmy Skye, Summer, and Linda Lou Thank you for teaching me how to love dangerously again. I will love you that way too. Forever.

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He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tāngata! He tāngata! He tāngata! What is the most important thing in the world? It is people! It is people! It is people! —MĀORI P R OVE RB

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CONTENTS Foreword xi Introduction What Is Dangerous Love? 1 Chapter 1 Dangerous Love in the Desert 7 Chapter 2 Practicing Dangerous Love 17 Chapter 3 Seeing Conflict as Smog 23 Chapter 4 Overcoming Our Fear of Conflict 31 Chapter 5 How a Smog Thinker Fights Conflict 39 Chapter 6 How a Cocoon Thinker Transforms Conflict 55 Chapter 7 The Chasm of Separation and Self-Deception 67 Chapter 8 Bridging the Gap between Fear and Love 75 Chapter 9 Mistakes Were Made 83 Chapter 10 But Not by Me 91 Chapter 11 Escalating Conflict 97 Chapter 12 What War Is Good For 107 Chapter 13 Waiting for Them to Turn 117 Chapter 14 Turning First 127 Chapter 15 The Kumbaya Fallacy 135 Chapter 16 Inviting Them to Turn 149 Chapter 17 Truth, Mercy, and Justice 155 Chapter 18 Keeping the Peace 167 Chapter 19 The Long-Short Way 177 Chapter 20 Small and Simple Things 191 Chapter 21 Troubleshooting Dangerous Love 199

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Contents

Chapter 22 Choosing Love over Fear 205 Notes 219 List of Stories 225 Acknowledgments 229 Index 233 Additional Resources About the Author

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FOREWORD Over a decade ago, I received a phone call out of the blue from Chad Ford. We had never met, although I was aware of Chad from his work at ESPN. I’m a big basketball fan, and I knew Chad as one of ESPN’s key NBA analysts. I didn’t know until that phone call that his true passion in life was not sports but conflict. Chad had just arrived home in Hawaii following a challenging conflict resolution experience in the Middle East. The delicate negotiation he had been engaged to conduct had ended in success, but this surprised even him. Until the final few minutes of the negotiation, the entire effort had been an abysmal failure. As he drove to the airport in Tel Aviv to board his flight home, Chad replayed the experience in his mind. Try as he might, he couldn’t explain what had turned a certain failure into sudden success. So when he boarded his flight, Chad was both exhilarated and perplexed—happy about the result but troubled that he had no idea how to replicate it. During that flight, he discovered the understanding he was seeking. It came in the form of a book that one of his students had given him prior to the trip—The Anatomy of Peace by the Arbinger Institute. Chad pulled the book from his bag after the flight had lifted off from Tel Aviv. By the time he landed in Honolulu, the book had transformed his understanding of

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conflict—including his perception of the negotiation he had just completed. It illuminated for Chad the poorly understood foundational underpinnings of conflict and helped him see, step-by-step, what had happened during his negotiation—how he actually had been making matters worse in the beginning and why everything suddenly turned for the better. He couldn’t wait to talk to someone at Arbinger about his experience and to learn more about our work. I was the fortunate person who was able to talk with Chad that day. Conflict professionals like Chad know a secret: sometimes their work helps and sometimes it doesn’t, and often they don’t know why. Armed with various theories and tools, they sift through their knowledge and skill sets hoping to find something that will help. When they find the right mix, “Sometimes,” they say, “magic happens.” But magic cuts both ways—both for and against. Even when unexplained good fortune smiles in one’s direction, if it remains in the realm of magic, there is no reliable way to plan practical and effective change efforts; everything is left to hope and chance. For Chad, the discovery of Arbinger’s work was the end to his confusion about why some approaches work while others don’t. It illuminated how to build conflict resolution approaches that work. In the years since our initial conversation, Chad has become a trusted colleague and one of my dearest friends. He and I have worked together to develop Arbinger’s conflict approaches and offerings, and I’ve told many people over these years that Chad Ford, armed with an understanding of Arbinger’s principles, is one of the best conflict resolution professionals on the planet. All my experience with Chad over these years solidifies that belief.

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If I had to describe Dangerous Love in one sentence, I would say that it is the book version of being with Chad in person. Because that is so, I can confidently say that you will find this to be an interesting, meaningful, and moving read. From an Arbinger perspective, Dangerous Love is a deep and practical exploration of what we at Arbinger call “the most important move.” Which means that in addition to enjoying the read, I also believe in the foundational importance of the book’s message. May you have the willingness and courage to feel and apply dangerous love. Jim Ferrell Managing Partner and Author The Arbinger Institute

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INTRODUCTION

WHAT IS DANGEROUS LOVE? One way to define conflict is “our inability to collaboratively solve problems with other people.” Whom are you in conflict with right now? Whom are you struggling to solve a problem with? A family member? A friend? A coworker? A neighbor? An organization or a political party? All of the above? We can handle conflict in basically one of two ways: constructively or destructively. When we engage in constructive conflict, we can find freedom from the negativity of contention. We can find justice and mercy, unlock creativity, develop inner strength and calm, strengthen our personal and social relationships, and solve deep-rooted problems in our lives. We can even find peace—in our personal lives, our relationships with others, the organizations we work in, and the communities we live in. Unfortunately, most of our experiences with conflict don’t look that way at all. They look more like destructive

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conflict. In destructive conflict, contention runs rampant. Justice and mercy are nowhere to be found. Our options feel limited. We feel weak and anxious. Broken relationships, dysfunctional workplaces, and divided communities and nations are left behind in the rubble. Which type of conflict are you in at the moment? Are you feeling frustrated? Irritated? Angry? Confused? Trapped? Hopeless? Does a solution to the conflict seem hopelessly out of reach? Have you given up on finding peace with those you are in conflict with? Or are you still swinging away, hoping that you’ll land the blow that helps them come to their senses? If you are feeling any of these ways toward any of these people, I wrote this book for you. Conflict is always going to be with us—relationships are funny that way. Knowing how to transform destructive conflict into constructive conflict is critical to our personal, professional, and societal well-being. Yet, by and large, we are terrible at it. Relationship researcher John Gottman writes that the inability of couples to talk about and work through their problems is the single biggest indicator of marital unhappiness. Sixty-nine percent of conflict in relationships is about ongoing, seemingly unsolvable problems.1 A Stanford University study of CEOs in 2013 found that the skill set CEOs felt they needed most was conflict resolution.2 And in a world that is increasingly becoming divided by political and social fissures, a 2018 Pew Research Center study found that young people are increasingly jaded about our ability to live together. The study found that they were much less likely to believe that people will help those in need, work together to solve community problems, and treat others with respect.3

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What keeps us from mastering the art of conflict transformation? Fear. Conflict feels dangerous for most people. We flee from it if we can. If we can’t run, we either give in or prepare for war. We build walls to protect us from the impending harm—emotional and physical—we fear is coming. Fear of conflict plagues our personal, professional, and societal relationships: fear of conflict itself, fear of the people we are in conflict with, fear of pain, fear of not being loved or seen the way we want to be seen, fear that we are woefully unprepared and ill-equipped to handle the problems that beset us. When we let that fear of conflict, and the people we are in it with, take hold, our ability to actually solve the problems that underlie our disputes diminish dramatically. What if we could transform our fear of conflict by learning how to love the people we are in conflict with through the conflict? Yes, love. I think it’s the crucial word in transforming conflict. I know love is an odd word to pair with conflict, let alone the pairing of the words dangerous and love. Many people hear the word love and think “soft.” However, I’m not talking about romantic love, nor the type of love that actually means “like.” That’s easy love. We all want to live and work with people who love us and whom we like—people who are fun to be around, understand our brilliance, agree with our ideas and dreams, see our potential, and help us on our journey to become the incredible people we ultimately know we can be. But when conflict enters our relationships, easy love makes a run for it. Love becomes a lot more challenging when the people we live and work with don’t love us back, or when we don’t

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like them, they don’t get us or they drive us nuts, they don’t believe in our ideas and dreams, or, even worse, they get in the way of our journey. Here’s the paradox that makes conflict feel dangerous: when conflict comes, our instincts are to run or fight—to stop loving. To transform conflict, we need to turn toward others, put down our physical and emotional weapons, and really love the people we are in conflict with. I call that sort of love dangerous love—a love that overcomes fear in the face of conflict. Nothing is “safe” in dangerous love. Dangerous love requires more than courage; it demands fearlessness. It is scary. It takes risks. Dangerous love transforms conflict by calling upon us to let go of our self-preservation instinct inspired by fear (“What will happen to me if l let down my walls and help the person I’m in conflict with?”) and embrace us-preservation (“What will happen to us if I don’t?”).4 It calls upon us to be vulnerable enough to open ourselves up with no guarantee that the person or people on the other side of the conflict will do the same. It asks us to be the first to turn toward the people we are in conflict with. Dangerous love is a love that allows us to see the humanity of others so clearly that their needs and desires matter as much to us as our own, regardless of how they see us. It is the opposite of easy love. It is choosing love over fear in the face of conflict. It is choosing we over me. Dangerous love is remarkably effective in transforming our conflicts because it creates space for us to truly see the people we are struggling with. When dangerous love takes hold, our views—of ourselves, others, and the conflict itself— transform. We no longer see enemies or others. We see us.

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That is the level of care and concern toward the people we are in conflict with needed to solve the most difficult, intractable challenges we face in life. That is the type of love needed to mend relationships in our families, overcome gridlock in the workplace, solve for deep polarization in our communities and countries, and collaboratively engage in problem-solving with our adversaries internationally. I have come to believe that dangerous love is the only way that we can transform destructive conflict into constructive conflict.

Is This Book for You? This is a book for everyday people who struggle to deal with their own conflicts at home, at work, or in their communities or nations. It is filled with the lessons I’ve learned as a mediator, facilitator, and college professor over the past fifteen years. My work with the Arbinger Institute as a consultant and facilitator has been especially impactful. Arbinger’s work has been foundational in my view of conflict and conflict transformation and forms the basis for many of the key concepts in Dangerous Love. If you have read Leadership and Self-Deception, The Anatomy of Peace, or The Outward Mindset, this book will give you a new way to look at key concepts from Arbinger, such as seeing people as people, outward mindset, selfdeception, collusion, and the most important move, through the lens of conflict transformation. If you are new to Arbinger’s ideas or conflict resolution and peacebuilding theories in general, the book will serve as both a primer and a road map to helping us overcome our fear of conflict and the people we are in conflict with.

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As you work your way through the book, thinking of one person or a group of people whom you are struggling with will be helpful. That part usually comes pretty easy. Here’s the hard part. Instead of thinking about how this book applies to them and how much better off you would be if they read it, I want you to instead ask, “How does this book apply to me in this relationship? How could I use these tools to change?” The goal of this book? By the end, you’ll have the ability to see conflict, specifically your conflict, in a completely different light. And once you see it differently, you’ll have the tools and the courage to change. Making even small progress toward one person can have a big impact on our personal relationships, our teams at work, and our communities. Dangerous Love explains why we struggle with conflict, how we disconnect from the people we’re in conflict with at the very time we need to be most connected to them, and the predictable patterns of justification and escalation that ensue. Most importantly, it gives us a path to practice dangerous love in the conflicts that matter most to us. The world may not get better. But we can be. And our being better might be the thing that actually changes the world.

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CHAPTER 1

DANGEROUS LOVE IN THE DESERT The glue that holds all of our relationships together is the mutual recognition of the desire to be seen, heard, listened to, and treated fairly: to be recognized, understood, and to feel safe in the world. When out identity is accepted and we feel included, we are granted a sense of freedom and independence and a life filled with hope and possibility. — DON N A HICKS

“But what if he’s a bad man?” Miriam, a Middle Eastern woman in her early twenties, asked me the second day into our conflict transformation training. “I understand all of this ‘dangerous love’ talk. But what if the person that is singlehandedly keeping our organization from being successful is evil? Are we just supposed to sit back and let him win?” Miriam and a small group of young women had recently started a small nonprofit that was struggling to gain traction in the community. Their stated goal was to get young Muslim women interested in sports as a way to create identity and self-worth. But they kept running into a huge

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obstacle. The nonprofit didn’t have enough money to build their own sports facilities. The owner of the only gym in the community, Mahmoud, refused to allow women to play there. Miriam had gone to Mahmoud several times asking for an exception. Each time she was rebuffed. Without the gym, the group had no permanent place to operate from. People in the community were struggling to take them seriously. As Miriam spoke about Mahmoud, her frustration was evident. She had tried to be nice to him and to understand what his motivations were. She had offered to pay him in exchange for the use of the gym. When her offer failed, she tried to picket his gym in protest. No matter what she did, he kept refusing, and the more he refused, the more Miriam became convinced that he was their biggest problem—another sexist, old, stuck-in-his-traditional-ways male refusing women their equal rights. Miriam and the others in the room were wrestling with the basic ideas taught by the Arbinger Institute. At the heart of Arbinger’s work is the idea that we can see people in one of two ways—as people or as objects.1 See people as objects and we have an inward mindset. See people as people and we have an outward mindset.2 However, seeing people as people is extremely challenging when we are in the midst of a destructive conflict. The women were finding it hard to apply the concepts of dangerous love to themselves. How do you practice dangerous love when the person you are in conflict with embodies the very evil you are trying to fight? That doesn’t feel dangerous. It feels like suicide. Imagine two people standing back-to-back, elbowing each other, as illustrated in figure 1.

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Figure 1. The conflict figure.

They can feel each other, but they can’t see each other. Each person blames the other person for not seeing him or her. The more the two get elbowed, the more convinced they are that they actually see the very people they aren’t seeing. Figure 1 They magically know their thoughts, motivations, and character—and the verdict isn’t good. Both people wait, hopelessly, for the other person to turn and see them. They both decide that if the other person turns, then they will turn too. Unfortunately, they also don’t believe the other person will ever actually turn. The longer they wait in vain for the other person to turn, the more frustration, helplessness, and fear they feel. In these sorts of conflicts, people get stuck in a rut of • Self-absorption: seeing only their own pain • Weakness: feeling helpless to do anything about it Miriam is experiencing both. She has a nonprofit to run. She needs help. The only person in town with the facilities to help her won’t help. No matter what she does, he keeps saying no. All she can think about is how Mahmoud is making her life difficult. When we get stuck in conflict, we have a hard time seeing other people as people. Our mindset turns inward.3 We start seeing the situation only through the lens of how others affect us. Once that happens, we start exacerbating the very conflict

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we say we want to end.4 When we try all the ideas that we think should work from that inward, self-absorbed, weak position and they fail, conflict feels intractable. Intractable is scary. In the face of fear, whether that be toward a teenager, coworker, or community member, we rarely are our best selves. We run if we can. If we can’t, we retaliate. We fight. The situation gets worse. We say we want the conflict to end but only on our terms. And our terms typically require the person we are in conflict with to turn and see us as people first. That will not happen with Mahmoud as long as Miriam is picketing his gym. The other option is obvious. It’s also dangerous. We find the strength to love—to be the first to turn and see the people we are in conflict with as people. This act of turning toward others—first, and without expectation or demand that they turn as well—is what Arbinger calls “the most important move” (figure 2).5

Both Turned Away

I Turn First

Figure 2. The most important move. Figure 2

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Ask people why they don’t turn first, and safety and vulnerability always come up. Being the first person to turn feels dangerous. “They started it! What if they don’t turn back? What if they take advantage of me or take my turning as a sign of weakness?” That’s where Miriam and Mahmoud were stuck. I suspected there was more going on with Mahmoud than Miriam believed, but each time I pressed her, she resisted. “You don’t know him,” she said. “No one, not even the men in the village, likes him. He will never change.” I asked Miriam what she really wanted. “The gym!” she replied. I asked her why. “Because our organization can’t work without it!” Then I asked her why the program was so important to her. She talked about the struggles she and other women and girls in the village faced. She talked about how she felt her culture and the people in her village saw her as less important and her dreams less real than those of men. After several more “why” questions, she got there: “I don’t ever want other young girls to feel the way I felt. It’s too late for me. But it isn’t too late for them.” Then I asked her whether the path that she was taking to get to her “why” adhered to the same values of seeing everyone as important and everyone’s dreams as equally real. She said she didn’t know. I asked Miriam a number of questions about Mahmoud, and it turned out she knew very little about his background— why he owned the gym or even why he was refusing to let the group use it. That was the first clue that maybe she wasn’t seeing Mahmoud the same way she wanted him to see her.

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However, one interesting tidbit did emerge. Since Mahmoud had the only gym in the village, everyone was constantly asking him to use it for free. There wasn’t much money in the village, and most of the villagers could not afford to pay the gym fees. I asked Miriam to imagine how it must feel to be constantly approached by people asking for help—even when giving that help compromised Mahmoud’s ability to run a successful business. Miriam paused and huddled with the others in her nonprofit. They hadn’t thought about the problem that way before. They were the ones with problems, not Mahmoud. Once they saw a potential problem that Mahmoud might be facing, the question they began to ponder was this—“What could we do to be helpful to Mahmoud?” By the end of the weekend, they had a plan. Miriam said that when they got back home, they were going to offer to clean the gym for Mahmoud every night after it closed. They would do it for free. Their hope was that he would see that the girls were both kind and serious and would eventually grant them access to the gym. Miriam and her colleagues left the workshop encouraged that there might be a way out of the conflict that they hadn’t thought of and promised to send updates. A few weeks later I heard from Miriam. “Good news,” she wrote in her email. “Mahmoud has allowed us to clean the gym. We have been working for several weeks and he seems happy. Each night he brings us tea and thanks us. We want to ask him if we can use the gym now. What do you think?” Miriam already thought she’d done enough to begin asking Mahmoud to change.

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I wrote back, “That is great. Are you seeing him as a person yet?” She replied, “I don’t know.” Gandhi taught that the means are the ends in the making.6 If the group cleaned the gym to truly help Mahmoud, they couldn’t fail—even if he wouldn’t let them use the gym. If they did it to try to persuade or manipulate him to let them use the gym, it would likely be a disaster. How Miriam saw Mahmoud would ultimately decide their relationship, not what she did. Miriam thought the way out of the conflict was by helping him see her as a person. Why? Because helping or forcing someone to see you as a person feels much less dangerous than seeing someone as a person regardless of how he or she sees you. While the move feels authentic, it is still, primarily about me. And if it fails, if she had asked to use the gym and Mahmoud had said no, do you think she would keep seeing him as a person? Dangerous love can’t be contingent on the people we are in conflict with loving us back. If we have to wait for an assurance that others will reciprocate, we could be waiting forever. I wrote to Miriam, “Are you cleaning the gym because you care about Mahmoud and want to be helpful to him? Or are you doing it because you want him to change? Only you really know whether you are seeing him as a person or not.” The answers to those questions would help Miriam decide whether she was practicing dangerous love yet. “I think we need to wait,” was her short retort. A few weeks later, Miriam wrote again: “We are still cleaning the gym. Mahmoud keeps spending more and more

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time each night talking to us. We have even been invited to his home for dinner. Can we ask him now? Maybe at dinner?” “Are you cleaning his gym for the right reasons yet?” I replied. “What have you learned about Mahmoud? Do you understand why Mahmoud is turning you away? Do you know what his goals and challenges are? Until you understand what he’s trying to achieve, you won’t know whether it’s even right to ask.” Several days later, another email came through. “You are not going to believe what happened at dinner. We met Mahmoud’s wife. She was especially warm to us. She kept telling us how surprised and delighted she was that her husband had invited us over.” For privacy’s sake, I can’t get into the details of what Miriam learned next. What I can say is that she found out that Mahmoud had a very personal reason for resisting Miriam’s efforts to let her use the gym. He had a conflict with his daughter that had gone on for years. He blamed himself and the gym he had created for the fact that they no longer spoke. “I think I understand why we aren’t allowed to use the gym. Don’t worry, I won’t ask. I just want to help,” Miriam wrote. Now she was ready to put dangerous love into practice—not because she wanted Mahmoud to let her use the gym (though she still wanted this) but because she wanted to help Mahmoud. Something powerful had changed in Miriam. Her story about Mahmoud and her story about her relationship with him were now radically different. He was no longer just the evil, sexist gym owner who was keeping her from her dreams. He was also a grieving father—a grieving father she wanted to help.

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Several weeks later, Miriam sent me the end of the story. She and some of her colleagues took it upon themselves to find a way to help Mahmoud. They, with the help of Mahmoud’s wife, helped Mahmoud reconcile with his daughter. Several weeks later, Miriam and her nonprofit had access to the gym. She had turned first and then invited Mahmoud to turn (figure 3). In the face of her impulse to demand that she and her organization be seen and understood (the self-preservation move we tend to make in conflict), Miriam’s choice to turn and see Mahmoud as a person invited Mahmoud to do the same. Miriam had discovered dangerous love.

Both Turned Away

Miriam Turns First

She Invites Mahmoud to Turn

Figure 3. Inviting the other person to turn. Figure 3

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CHAPTER 2

PRACTICING DANGEROUS LOVE Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear. —I SA UPAN ISHAD ( HIN DU S CRIP TUR E)

The question dangerous love asks is, “Are we willing to turn first?” How do we get to the place where our answer is “Yes, I’ll do whatever it takes”? How do we love someone we are afraid of through conflict?

Step 1: Let Go of Our Fear of Conflict People have an extraordinary capacity to find lasting solutions to their problems when their humanity is valued and respected. Consider Miriam’s story. In the beginning, she was sure that Mahmoud wouldn’t change. He was a bad person, and bad people don’t change. She had tried everything to make things work. Everything had failed.

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When people believe that their problems are unsolvable, they quit asking questions. They stop being creative. They double down on what hasn’t worked in the past. They choose conflict tools such as avoidance, accommodation, or competition to get what they want. And they almost always end up unhappy. Not until Miriam saw a new, different path forward did she begin to consider that addressing the conflict may not be as terrible as she imagined. When I do mediations, people often feel the need to recite their grievances toward the other party in front of the mediator. When they do, the people on the other side get predictably defensive and then lay out their own complaints. This goes round and round. The participants start getting frustrated. Soon they aren’t listening, just defending. After a few minutes I typically stop them and ask, “Is this how these conversations typically go between you?” They nod their heads yes. “And how does the conversation end?” They admit they walk away angrier or more frustrated than they were before—convinced, more than ever, that the other party won’t change. “What will happen if we have the same conversation today?” Here the answers vary. Some people believe mediators are wizards who can magically transform their problems into gold. When I assure them I can’t, the answer typically ends with, “Same as before.” “Could we try something different today? Something that might give us a better chance at success than what we’ve done previously?” They almost always nod their heads yes. And when they do, the conflict is finally able to move out of the

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rut that it has been stuck in for weeks, months, or years. Sometimes within hours, other times within days, they are able to find solutions to problems that they have wrestled with for years. Conflict doesn’t have to be scary. It can actually be the catalyst that helps improve our relationships if we possess the right tools to transform it from destructive to constructive conflict. The next four chapters of the book address our fear of conflict and how to overcome it. They invite us to look at the types of conflict styles we use and offer us a new way to view conflict that makes our struggles feel safer and more collaborative.

Step 2: Let Go of Our Fear of the People We Are in Conflict With When we change the way we see the people we are in conflict with, we create space that invites new possibilities and solutions to our problems. Think of what happened next for Miriam. She began cleaning Mahmoud’s gym. She started to get to know him and his family. Eventually her group was invited over for dinner. There she acquired even more information, which helped her see why Mahmoud didn’t want them to use the gym. The more she understood Mahmoud’s “whys” and the reasons they were important to him, the more she was able to understand his needs and how she might be able to help him. She began seeing his humanity so clearly that his needs and desires mattered as much as her own. She began letting go of self-concern and started embracing us-concern. If Miriam was ever going to be successful at the work she believes in, Mahmoud had to be part of that success. This shift is so critical, I’ve dedicated six chapters to helping us understand why we don’t see people as people,

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what the consequences are, and how to let go of the justifications that keep us holding on to the false belief that “I’m not responsible for how I see others; they are.”

Step 3: I Turn First Feeling love toward someone we are in conflict with is hard. Putting that love into action is even harder, in part, because we have to be the first to turn toward the other person—the first to offer an apology, acknowledgment, respect, or a collaborative solution. Acting first isn’t a sign of weakness. Dangerous love is not passive. It is bold. It requires sacrifice. Your family (or friends or coworkers or neighbors) may not respond by seeing you as a person. But if you don’t act in a way that shows that you see someone as a person, then it won’t take long before you turn away again. Miriam thought that once she saw Mahmoud as a person, everything would be good. However, solving the conflict took a lot of hard work. Miriam had to respond to Mahmoud’s silent call for help before she’d see any resolution to her conflict. She had to turn first. Until Miriam cultivated that dangerous love for Mahmoud, the creative and collaborative problem-solving she needed to fix her problem couldn’t occur. Both Miriam and Mahmoud wanted to use the gym. Neither side was willing to budge. Had Miriam asked Mahmoud earlier about why her group couldn’t use the gym, I suspect she wouldn’t have gotten a straight answer—especially given the fact that Miriam had tried to harm his business. And even if he had told her the truth, given how Miriam felt about her project, it might have made her even more hard line in her belief that he needed to change his ways.

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Chapters 13, 14, and 15 give us a path toward finding the love and courage necessary to break the escalation cycle of conflict by taking a journey through what hasn’t worked in the past. Once we are clear about what is not working, the path to dangerous love gets much clearer.

Step 4: Invite Them to Turn Small acts of acknowledgment, recognition, humility, and determination to find mutually beneficial solutions invite others to turn. Dangerous love doesn’t require grand gestures. It requires an intentional commitment to loving someone through conflict every day. Miriam and Mahmoud aren’t the only ones who have to change their stories. She is involved in a much bigger project that is meant to solve a pervasive and difficult problem that exists well beyond Mahmoud. For Miriam and Mahmoud, the fact that they’ve changed the way they see each other paves the way for them to start changing the patterns of conflict that undergirded their interactions. In Mahmoud’s case, it means opening up the gym in his community to women. In Miriam’s case, she is more empowered to get participants and partners in her program now that she is showing a fundamental change on the ground. Of course, they have years and years of work left. But without the change that each of them underwent, the potential for success wouldn’t be nearly as high. Dangerous love gives us the ability to not just coexist with each other, but to thrive with each other—even our enemies. The last seven chapters of the book show us the power dangerous love has on others—at home, at work, and in the community. They are a powerful invitation to change.

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The stories you will read are deeply personal. They are the best kind of stories—stories of hope in seemingly hopeless conflict. They are meant to inspire us to choose love over fear. While Dangerous Love seeks to transform our personal relationships by inviting us to change the way we see ourselves and others in the midst of conflict, its ultimate goal is much more audacious. In a time when communities are becoming more divided, the world needs more people who will choose love over fear in the face of conflict, people who give hope in a time of hopefulness, people who will be influences for peace when anger and anxiety reign. After reading this book, I hope you have the desire, the courage, and the tools to be one of those people.

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CHAPTER 3

SEEING CONFLICT AS SMOG The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear. —MAHATMA GAN DHI

When you hear the word conflict, what do you think of? What’s the first metaphor that comes to mind? Write it down. Now think of a specific person you are in conflict with. What does conflict look like with him or her? Again, write it down. Let’s try again. This time think about a conflict in your organization. What does that one look like? Keep writing. Now try your community or country. What metaphor comes to mind? Let’s put that one down too. I do this exercise with my senior peacebuilding students at the start of their final semester. These students have been studying both peace and conflict for several years. Nevertheless, I know what is coming. Inevitably, out of a class of twenty-five students from two dozen or so countries in the world, just about everyone writes down something negative—something like volcanos, tornados, or forest fires.

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Conflict scares the hell out of many of us. Did the metaphors you wrote down look scary too? One semester, a student from Hong Kong summed up the mood of the class. “Conflict is like smog,” he said. “It is everywhere. It fills my lungs and makes them burn. And while I don’t like the smog and want it to go away, what can I do? Even if I sell my car and quit driving, others won’t. There’s no escaping it.” No one likes smog. The smog metaphor paints conflict as inconvenient and restrictive, the result of some external force that we cannot escape. It is everywhere, and unless all of us start living differently, it’s not going away. That’s what makes smog so frustrating. While I could walk to work or cut emissions to reduce my contribution to the smog epidemic, it will matter little unless others do the same. So why even try since we know others won’t change? We live in a world filled with destructive conflict, and so often we feel simultaneously overwhelmed and helpless to do anything about it. We do just about anything to get away from it. We run and hide, avoid, blame, attempt to legislate it, and even go to war when we run out of other options. Running, blaming, legislating, or forcing our way through conflict never seems to leave us with the lasting solutions we need. Our ability to bring about lasting transformation or cessation of conflict often feels frustratingly limited. It’s taxing. When we come home from a long day at work or sit down after a monotonous day at home with the kids, our fatigue typically has less to do with any physical exertion and more to do with mental exhaustion. We spend way too much of our time figuratively putting out fires.

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Smog seems like an understatement. No wonder we can’t or won’t see each other. Seeing conflict as smog is a major impediment to mustering the sort of dangerous love we need to truly transform conflict. In the story in chapter 1, Miriam saw conflict this way. She was convinced that any interaction she had with Mahmoud was going to turn out bad. When we have a smog view of conflict, we never think about being the first to turn because it feels like our turning couldn’t possibly make a difference. In fact, the smog view of conflict invites us to stay entrenched in our destructive conflict.

The Insanity of Conflict Having a negative perception of conflict adds to both the perpetuation and the escalation of it. In 2013, a study based on research of seven thousand workers in London found that the more negative people’s perceptions were about stress, the more likely they were to have a heart attack.1 If people reported that their health was heavily affected by stress, they doubled the chances of having a heart attack in comparison to those that saw stress as a positive motivator. “We found that the association we observed between an individual’s perception of the impact of stress on their health and their risk of a heart attack was independent of biological factors, unhealthy behaviours and other psychological factors,” Dr. Hermann Nabi, one of the authors, said. “One of the important messages from our findings is that people’s perceptions about the impact of stress on their health are likely to be correct.”2 Stress, as it turns out, doesn’t necessarily kill us. But perceiving stress negatively does.

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Perceptions of conflict work in a similar way. See conflict as constructive, see the people involved in the conflict as people with equally valid if not similar desires, fears, and wants, and you’re likely to turn it into something positive.3 Perceive conflict negatively, especially the people we are stuck in conflict with, and things start going downhill quickly. The more exhausted we become, the angrier or more frustrated we get, the more likely we are to escalate the conflict and unwittingly create even more of it. In short, we create the very thing we say we want to go away. Negative conflict becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.4

Telling Conflict Stories When a spouse comes into my office looking for mediation help, a student is ready to choke his roommate, a manager is unhappy with the poor performance of her employees, or a member of the State Department is frustrated because every project she is working on to effect change doesn’t take hold the way she wanted—each person’s story sounds a little bit like this: I don’t know what to do anymore. [Insert the name of the person or group here] is driving me crazy. They don’t respect me. They are constantly doing things to irritate or hurt me. I try to be calm. I try to be helpful. I try to correct them. I try to let them know how I feel about it and what they need to do to change, but they won’t listen. They are so stubborn and stuck in their ways. No matter what I do, nothing changes. And I can’t take it anymore. I’m exhausted. I’ve tried everything. Help me. Please help me change them.

Before you laugh, think hard. I’m sure our friends or our parents or a boss at work can probably remember a conversation about us that sounded very similar.

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The more obsessed we become with externalizing the problem (putting it somewhere outside ourselves) and personalizing the conflict (they don’t have a problem, they are the problem), the more we feel helpless to do anything about it. With blame comes a loss of control. Others determine our reality because we are not accountable. Think about Miriam again. From Miriam’s point of view, she and her organization didn’t have a problem. Mahmoud was the problem. And because he was the problem and owned the only solution to their problem, they felt helpless. Miriam had run out of ideas and was blind to the ways she was inviting him to be a bigger problem. Giving up that accountability, so we don’t have to face the truth about ourselves, is alluring. But the second we begin blaming, we have handed over our whole reality to someone else. We no longer call the shots because we have created a reality where every struggle belongs to someone else—to that person’s choices. Very few people like to feel that matters are out of their direct control. The more we perceive others (or the universe) as hostile toward our goals—robbing us of our ability to think and act as we choose—the unhappier we become. The unhappier we are, the more we need to blame others for our unhappiness. The more we blame, the more we invite others to behave in the very ways we don’t want them to.5 The more out of control we feel, the more desperate our actions become (either through retreat or confrontation). The more desperate our actions, the more likely we are to dig an even bigger hole for the conflict. Essentially, as we become stuck in our conflict stories, the interactions with those we are in conflict with wane. We separate and then tell the story of that separation in a way that justifies our separation. When we do so, our conflict

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narratives—the accounts we give others whenever we are in conflict—become both weak and self-absorbed.6 They are weak, because they sound helpless: “Help me!” “I can’t take it anymore!” “They just won’t change!” “She won’t listen to me!” “Why is he hurting me?” They are self-absorbed because the two dominant words laced in every conflict narrative are me and I: “Help me!” “I can’t take it anymore!” “They just won’t change (for me)!” “She won’t listen to me!” “Why is he hurting me?” These narratives show very little recognition that those we are in conflict with, might have some issues of their own and would, if they could, likely tell me the exact same thing if they were the ones sitting in my office. Can you imagine what Mahmoud would have said about Miriam and her organization? Perhaps something like this: “What did I do to them? All of a sudden they are protesting my gym? Who am I to them? Who are they to me? Why are they hurting me? They won’t listen to me! Help me!” No wonder conflict is scary for many of us. Our vision of what’s really going on is so obfuscated that everything— every word, every facial gesture, every action—is a step into the unknown, a step that could be life or death to us. It’s not physical life or death most of the time, but life or death to something we often cherish over our own lives, a life or death we are often not even aware of. When we’re stuck in a destructive conflict, we may not be able to eat, sleep, or feel comfortable at home or work. We

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often obsess about the conflict to the point that everything we try to do to fix it only seems to make things worse. We’re endlessly occupied with who is right and who is wrong. We often feel as if the hurt will never stop and no one seems to care. We often find ourselves asking, “How do I go on like this for months or years? I can barely make it through the day!” The stories we tell in the midst of destructive conflict portray conflict as out of our control: it’s not our fault; they started it; our misbehavior, if any, was a result of provocation from them; or the problem lies in how we or they were raised. Sometimes we’ll argue that conflict is in our (or their) blood or DNA. Perceive conflict the smog way, and feelings of hopelessness are sure to follow. We start to feel • Hopeless in a marriage • Hopeless with a wayward child • Hopeless with a disrespectful neighbor • Hopeless because of an adversarial political party • Hopeless because the union or management will never really change • Hopeless because we cannot pick a spot in this world where poverty, violence, and even war aren’t raging to some degree Of course we fear conflict. We believe, too often, that it’s fueled by unpredictable people looking out for their own self-interest. No one can control that. If you have this view of conflict and I use the phrase “dangerous love,” the response is something like this: “Dangerous love? It’s not going to work for these problems. All it will do is get me killed!” When it comes to conflict, so many of our stories are blind to the reality of the situation, and that blindness takes

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a serious toll on us and others. It takes a problem and turns it into something potentially destructive. If others aren’t going to change and if I can’t change and if conflict is never going to end, our methods of dealing or coping with conflict are going to take on the DNA of those pessimistic beliefs. Fortunately, that’s not the only way we can see conflict.

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CHAPTER 4

OVERCOMING OUR FEAR OF CONFLICT We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty. —MAYA AN G E LOU

Remember the exercise where I asked you to come up with a metaphor for conflict? The one that introduced the idea that conflict is like smog? Well, the exercise doesn’t always go the smog way. Inevitably, every couple of years, one of my students will see the word conflict completely differently. He or she will say something like Bella, a young woman from the tiny island of Palau, said one semester: Conflict is like a cocoon. We think life is just great as a caterpillar—walking around, eating leaves. It’s what every caterpillar does. And then suddenly we get trapped in this confining, claustrophobic space—a chrysalis—for weeks or even months or years. We want to run away, go back to just eating leaves, but we can’t. The process is terrifying. The caterpillar has to die so that it can become something else. When

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we emerge from the chrysalis, we see ourselves and the people around us differently. Not only are we free, but we’re a butterfly now. Life becomes so much more than walking around eating leaves. Now we can fly!

Bella saw conflict not only as scary (though a cocoon is painful and scary) but also as an opportunity, something that pushes you to grow and expand. Most students in the class seemed quite perplexed when she shared her cocoon metaphor. “Sure, you say that now,” someone said with a laugh. “But that’s not how I feel when I’m in the middle of it!” True enough. But I think Bella’s story rings truer than we may give her credit for. She acknowledges that conflict feels confining and threatening in the moment. It is dangerous for the caterpillar. That caterpillar is going to die. However, she also acknowledges that conflict contains the possibility of being transformational. Embedded in her story is the idea that people can change— change the way they see and interact with the world. Conflict can be a major catalyst for that kind of change. Miriam’s view of conflict changed from smog to cocoon in Mahmoud’s house the evening she went over for dinner. Once she saw Mahmoud as a struggling father, she went from feeling hopeless to seeing a real opportunity to connect in a way that met her needs as well as his. Seeing Mahmoud as a struggling father helped Miriam see a path out of the conflict. She let go of her fear of conflict and her fear of Mahmoud, which gave her the courage to be the first to turn. When we choose to view conflict as both scary and potentially positive, and even helpful, we can create lasting bonds. This perspective can bring us closer. It creates resilience.

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I know Bella faces many of the same day-to-day challenges you and I face. She, too, has difficult relationships in her life. She, too, experiences frustration and hardship. Yet Bella, unlike so many of us, perceives and processes those challenges and hardships differently. Most importantly, from a conflict perspective, she doesn’t see people as problems that need to be changed or fixed. She sees conflict as something natural that will, if perceived correctly, provide her with opportunities to make things better and help herself grow. That shift in perspective lies at the very core of what it means to be happy. Social psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi spent more than twenty years researching what brings people happiness. His answer was pretty shocking: the way we perceive the world has more to do with our happiness than the things, jobs, money, power, beauty, or comfort that we do or don’t have. Whether living in a slum or a mansion, we can choose to be happy or sad by gaining some control over how we see the world, Csikszentmihalyi writes: What I “discovered” was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.1

Bella seems to have acquired this control over how she perceives the world. Her cocoon metaphor foretells the possibility that conflict doesn’t have to be destructive. And her image of conflict as being transformative is also not just

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about changing behavior. A caterpillar doesn’t just behave differently when it emerges from the cocoon. It becomes something different—inviting everything around it to interact with it differently. In Bella’s metaphor, conflict transforms when the caterpillar changes into a butterfly. The source of that change is internal, not external. Bella’s perspective is so different from the conflict stories we read a few pages ago. The conflict narratives that embrace the smog metaphor reflect the belief that conflict changes when others change. And since others never change, conflict never ends. The cocoon view is empowering. It involves choice, as well as the ability to shape how we see others and the world. The smog view is discouraging. It questions our free will and sees the world and others as shapers of us. If conflict is something that we create, in large part via our perception, perhaps we have the capacity to transform it into something more constructive that shifts us from our blind, weak, self-absorbed narratives that are consumed with our own needs, challenges, and concerns to stories that show strength, accountability, and an openness to and concern for the needs, challenges, fears, hopes, and concerns of others. Our perception of conflict changes when we change. The question is whether we have the ability to change the way we see conflict and whether that change can alter the conflict dynamics at home, in our communities, and in the world.

Letting Go of Fear in the Face of Conflict For a brief moment on January 13, 2018, I, like almost everyone else in Hawaii, thought my world might end.

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My phone sounded the alert around eight o’clock in the morning: “BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.” Panic set in throughout the island. People leaped into survival mode and began barricading their homes. Others packed up their most precious belongings and fled to who knows where. My thoughts immediately went to the people I love— especially my partner and beautiful children. All my youngest children were asleep. I contemplated waking them. But the idea of their going peacefully, in their sleep, gave me some comfort. My phone was ringing. My partner was on the other side of the island and in tears. She knew she couldn’t make it back home in time. Panicked friends and students texted and called, asking what to do. I didn’t have much to say other than, “Hold this moment. Do not run from it. Do not cling too tight. It’s okay.” And then I went outside. I lay down in the grass and looked at the sky. And I waited. Forty-plus years of life experience had helped me see that I experienced the worst types of pain when I was in conflict with reality—when I refused to see myself, others, and even the world for what they really were. When I tried to hold on tightly to the false idea that I could change others without changing me, disappointment, hopelessness, and eventually fear always followed.2 Here, in this moment, there was only one choice. The world was going to be the way it was. I couldn’t stop a missile. So I did what I’ve been trying to do for much of my life: I overcame my fear in the face of conflict. I started practicing

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dangerous love. As my life flashed through my mind, I didn’t see my imminent destruction. I saw the beautifully flawed people who had impacted my life. I saw relationships thriving and broken. I saw a life filled with huge mistakes and small acts of redemption. Whatever was coming, no matter how scary it was, it wasn’t bigger than the love I felt at that moment. For one of the few moments in my life, I felt completely at peace in the face of the scariest thing imaginable. Thirty-eight minutes later (it felt like hours) reports began to trickle in that the text alert was a false alarm. No missile was heading to Hawaii. Often the thing we fear the most in conflict is fear itself. The first step in being able to practice dangerous love is to open up our hands that are gripping our fear of conflict, to let go of that which we cannot control and to hold on to that which we can. To do that, we have to first understand how we are viewing a conflict and how we might be able to see it differently.

E x e rci s e

From Smog to Cocoon Think about the metaphors that you wrote down at the start of the previous chapter. Are they smog metaphors or cocoon metaphors? Now think about the stories we hear and tell in conflict. Do these phrases sound familiar? • “Help me!” • “I can’t take it anymore!” • “They just won’t change!”

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• “She won’t listen to me!” • “Why is he hurting me?” If they do, you’re probably thinking about something a friend or coworker was complaining about to you. That's what smog thinkers say! Here’s the hard part. Can we hear those narratives in our own conflict stories—the ones we tell about family members, friends, our supervisors, or people with different social or political beliefs from our own? Try it for a minute. Think of someone you’ve been in a conflict with recently. Can you hear any of those phrases in your own story? If you can, what does it suggest about how you are seeing the conflict? Don’t be discouraged. If you can recognize those narratives, you just took a major step toward transforming the conflict. Knowing you’re thinking from a smog perspective is the first step in becoming a cocoon thinker. We can never change something that we can’t already see. Now you are ready for the next step. Try imagining that you are tightly gripping your fear in your hand. Now open up your hand. Let the fear stay as long as it needs to, and let it leave when it is ready. Becoming a cocoon thinker instead of a smog thinker requires more than just a recognition that we are afraid of conflict. It also demands that we ask fundamentally different questions about ourselves and others. Cocoon thinking ignites the process of becoming open to dangerous love. It opens up a whole new tool chest of resources to transform conflict that aren’t there when we are engaged in smog thinking.

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CHAPTER 5

HOW A SMOG THINKER FIGHTS CONFLICT Anger . . . it’s a paralyzing emotion . . . you can’t get anything done. People sort of think it’s an interesting, passionate, and igniting feeling—I don’t think it’s any of that—it’s helpless . . . it’s absence of control—and I need all of my skills, all of the control, all of my powers . . . and anger doesn’t provide any of that—I have no use for it whatsoever. — TON I MORRIS ON

In my first year of graduate school, I mustered up the courage to walk into my professor’s office to ask him for some advice about a family conflict I was enmeshed in. I had been studying conflict for a full semester and realized I had more problems than I cared to admit. I knew I needed help. The problem was that I didn’t want my professor to think poorly of me. I had to find a way to explain the conflict to him without looking like the bad guy.

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I carefully thought about how to tell my story. I even wrote it down to make sure that at no point in the story would it look like I shouldn’t be in his class. I was nervous walking into his office that day. I knew he was a conflict expert. I was afraid he was going to see right through me. I spent roughly ten minutes explaining the conflict to him. He listened without saying a word. When I was done, he was silent. “So . . . what should I do?” I finally asked when it became clear he wasn’t going to say anything. “That depends,” he said. “It’s been my experience that the theory of the conflict often leads us to its solution.” “Okay, that makes sense,” I responded. The truth was I had never even considered that before. But I was trying to look cool. “So, what’s your theory of the conflict?” “Actually, the question is, what’s your theory of the conflict?” he replied. “I’ve found that either we can be right or we can have peace. It’s pretty hard to have both. My question to you is, do you want to be right or do you want peace?” I knew the answer immediately, and I knew he did too. I wanted to be right. The whole way I told the story made that clear. I wasn’t looking for advice. I was looking for validation. I didn’t want someone telling me how to change. I wanted someone to tell me how to change someone else. I was stuck in a smog way of seeing conflict. If we see conflict as smog, if we want to be right, the solutions we come up with will typically reflect that belief. If we see conflict as a cocoon, if we want peace and see conflict as an opportunity to transcend fear and transform a relationship, the solutions we come up with will typically reflect that belief.

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I was stuck because the only thing I could think to do within the smog perspective was to keep pressing the person I was in conflict with to admit that I was right. The more the other person resisted, the harder I pushed. That approach was going nowhere. If I had wanted peace, I would’ve taken a very different approach. If we want to start practicing dangerous love and be the first to turn, we not only have to change our view of conflict but also have to choose conflict behaviors that reflect that view. These are the five basic approaches to conflict: • Conflict avoidance • Conflict management • Conflict resolution • Conflict transformation • Reconciliation The first two approaches—conflict avoidance and conflict management—are typically employed when conflict is perceived as being dangerous. It is the smog approach. The last two solutions on the list—conflict transformation and reconciliation—tend to be used when conflict is seen as constructive. Cocoons lead to butterflies. They require dangerous love. The middle choice, conflict resolution, tends to show up in both paradigms. However, a smog or cocoon paradigm dramatically alters how and when it’s applied and practiced. We will focus on the first three approaches in this chapter and the last two in chapter 6. When we see conflict and people from a smog perspective, virtually all problem-solving centers on self-interest. Whether your conflict or negotiating style is competition, avoidance, accommodation, or compromise, the focus is almost entirely on self—for good or for bad.1 And while

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each style has its place when it’s appropriate and even helpful, in most relational conflicts, none are especially useful in helping us achieve sustainable conflict transformation. When we are in a smog mindset, our balance between concern for self and others gets out of whack. We either prioritize ourselves while seeing others’ goals or aspirations as irrelevant or dangerous,2 or in certain styles, we prioritize others while seeing our own dreams and desires as unimportant.3

You Can Run, but You Can’t Hide Conflict avoidance is, far and away, the preferred choice of most people with a smog view of conflict. Many of us react to conflict the same way we react to being in physical danger. Psychologists refer to this sort of behavior as “regression.” Regression is a basic mental defense mechanism we employ to protect our identity in response to certain traumas and threats. Whenever we are faced with anxiety or fear, we mentally regress back to a place of safety. It’s perfectly normal. However, some people and groups get stuck there, and when they do, it fuels dangerous conflict escalation cycles.4 For many of us, conflict avoidance is the tactic that goes hand in hand with regression. We try to run and hide. Avoid conflict at all costs or sweep it under the rug. As long as we don’t confront it and steer as far away from it as we can, the thinking goes, we’ll be safe. In my experience, people who have witnessed destructive conflict in their lives, especially in their families, often take the conflict avoidance route. Conflict avoidance isn’t about engaging or seeing the other person. It's building a wall between us. It’s totally about protection (figure 4).

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Figure 4. Conflict avoidance.

Figure 4 us to avoid conflict. It’s Another sort of fear can cause the fear of not being seen as nice. Most of us are taught to be nice: that we just shouldn’t and can’t talk about some topics and that just enduring—suffering silently—is better than confronting conflict at home or at work or in the world. “Keep your head down and pretend it isn’t there” is the mantra. But niceness can become a weakness—and not in the way we may initially believe. When we don’t exercise our muscles of self-honesty, they will become weak. The more we ignore the truth before us via avoidance, the more we choose to turn ourselves into doormats and simultaneously get frustrated when people walk all over us. Avoidance itself, when taken too far or employed too long, becomes the problem. Additionally, conflict avoidance isn’t really nice. Pretending the conflict isn’t there doesn’t resolve or transform it. While it appears passive, it’s self-centered in a different way. Avoiders are more concerned about not rocking their boats than repairing relationships. Of course, we know that in many cases, conflict avoidance as a short-term strategy works. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, closing our eyes helps. It gives us the feeling of safety in the moment. But the problems still lie in wait

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outside our door, haunting us and keeping us from living our lives the way we want to—or worse, the way we were meant to. As long as we are running, hiding, ignoring, pretending, or suffering in silence, we are living in fear. We are smog thinkers. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you are a cocoon thinker), sometimes conflict can’t be avoided or ignored. If conflict avoidance doesn’t work, conflict management or force is often employed to try to minimize the damage or pummel the person into submission.

Those Who Can’t Run, Manage I have a close friend whose wife likes to garden. Shortly after buying their first home in Hawaii, she set out one weekend, while he was off-island on a project, to create a garden in the narrow strip of rocky soil in their backyard. She planted basil and rosemary, sweet potatoes and tomatoes, and even a few pineapples. Everyone in the family was assigned a job. My friend’s ten-year-old was in charge of watering. His thirteen-year-old was the harvester. His wife was the manager. Him? Without a chance to log his preference, he found out upon returning home that he was in charge of weeding the garden. That’s quite a job in Hawaii. With so much rain and sun year-round, jungles of weeds can grow on a vacant lot in months. Weeding was going to take a sustained, persistent effort. However, my friend wasn’t really into the garden and was even less into weeding. After repeated prodding from his wife, he went out to weed the garden one Saturday afternoon and did the only logical thing: he gassed up his weed whacker and mowed down the weeds (along with a number of vegetables, much to his family’s chagrin).

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Did he really think that was going to take care of the weeds? “They’re going to grow back no matter what I do,” he said. “Hawaii is an incubator for weeds. So I took the quickest solution to managing the weeds and tried to do as little damage as possible to the existing vegetables we wanted to keep.” That small example speaks to the strengths and weaknesses of conflict management as a method of dealing with conflict. The strengths of conflict management? The method was quick, had instantaneous results, and did remove the weeds, albeit temporarily. If my friend is committed to whacking weeds every week (and being more careful not to cut down tomato plants alongside everything else), he can keep up the appearance of a weed-free garden. The weeds, however, are still there. Everyone knows that you have to pull them out by their roots. They aren’t going to be visible for a few days, but they will grow back. And who wants to spend every weekend surgically cutting through weeds in a garden—especially a garden you don’t care about? If we can’t run from conflict, we often try to manage it. One conflict management style is to get fiercely competitive. That’s where force often comes in. We gas up the weed whacker. We take up arms in an effort to defend the castle and beat back the invaders. If we can project enough strength, perhaps those causing the conflict will surrender or just go away. However, as figure 5 illustrates, all we are doing is crashing into another person hoping that the person’s fear of pain will pummel him or her into submission. People become weeds that we need to mow down.

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Competition

Figure 5. Conflict management—competition.

An alternative conflict management style is to accommodate. We quickly surrender. Let others have what they want. Figure 5 If we can project enough passivity, perhaps those causing the conflict will be happy and eventually start to take our needs into consideration. As figure 6 illustrates, we think that we have turned to see the other person, but notice the direction of the arrow. The turn is ultimately about me, not the other person. I’m giving the person what he or she wants not because I want the person to have it but because it somehow protects me.

Figure 6. Conflict management—accommodation.

Figure 6

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The downsides of the competitive approach are obvious. We are seeking self-interest and ignoring that others also have needs, wants, and desires. We are trying to “win” the conflict. In most relationships, winning the conflict might feel good in the moment, but it’s not going to lead to a sustainable relationship. Accommodation takes the opposite approach. This style basically caves at the first sign of disagreement. While on the surface, accommodating can appear to be good— it does de-escalate conflict quickly—in the long run, it can be a problem. We have needs too, and when we constantly put others’ needs ahead of our own, especially on important issues, resentment typically follows. It’s not uncommon for accommodators to bottle up those resentments for months or years before eventually they blow. Conflict management is an important tool—especially when our efforts are geared toward protecting people from doing more damage to each other and from escalating the conflict. Asking anyone to see the humanity of another person while he or she is being metaphorically punched in the face is very difficult. Conflict management also works in situations where preserving a relationship isn’t important or the relationship feels much more important than getting what you want or need. However, a conflict management approach doesn’t address the deeper causes of the weeds. That means it’s a temporary solution that must be maintained indefinitely until a more permanent solution arrives. Conflict management as a tool is widespread. In practice, conflict management is the primary form of conflict work that most people use if avoidance won’t allow them to escape without confronting conflict.

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Parents do it when they send two misbehaving children to their respective rooms so they’ll stop fighting. Managers do it when they transfer a worker who is struggling to get along with his or her team. Community leaders do it when they create rules and laws that prohibit interactions with community members. On a global scale, organizations such as the United Nations do it when they send in peacekeepers to stop a civil war from escalating into genocide. The conflict gets temporarily weed whacked. However, conflict management, like conflict avoidance, is based on a key assumption that is worth noting. Many people who practice conflict management do so because they either believe that the people in conflict are unlikely to ever change the way they feel about each other or feel they don’t have the tools to do anything more than manage it. Their underlying philosophy of conflict and the people who engage in it is essentially this: human beings are inherently selfish and therefore will pursue their self-interest at any cost. Since your self-interest and my self-interest occasionally come in conflict with each other, conflict is inevitable unless it’s managed. The best that we can do is reward people when they get along (accommodation) and punish them when they don’t (competition or force). If we can manage the rewards and punishments correctly, people won’t escalate conflict to the point that it becomes destructive. They may still hate each other, but they have strong, selfish incentives and disincentives to not act on that hate. That’s why the UN has been manning a 112-mile demilitarized zone between Greek and Turkish Cypriots on the island of Cyprus since 1974. For more than forty years, with the help of barbed-wire fences, gun turrets, and land mines, the UN has kept the two sides apart. While this approach

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has dramatically hindered the escalation of violent conflict, Greek and Turkish Cypriots still harbor the same negative feelings toward each other that they have for decades. They just don’t hate each other enough to cross a series of land mines and fences to get at each other. But according to the UN forces, they are keeping the peace. And if peace means the absence of overt conflict, then they are right. And when we are in the midst of war, maybe that definition is enough. But long term, our responses to destructive conflict have to evolve beyond the absence of overt war. Yes, the conflict avoidance and conflict management solutions to peace are very much influenced by their definition of conflict. Both solutions see conflict as smog. The same can be said of conflict resolution.

When the Solution to the Problem Is Just More of the Problem In one of my favorite episodes of the television series The Office, Dunder Mifflin manager Michael Scott, played by the hilarious Steve Carrell, overhears a heated dispute between two coworkers—Angela and Oscar. Oscar is upset because Angela has a poster of two babies, decked out in fedoras, sunglasses, and diapers and holding jazz instruments, hanging on the office wall. The office HR rep, Toby, takes a conflict avoidance approach. He quietly listens to Oscar, takes down his complaint, files it in a box in the warehouse, and hopes that the conflict just blows over. We’ve all been there. Shocked at Toby’s passivity, Michael decides to intervene and the approach becomes more active. A conflict management approach would likely separate Oscar and Angela, perhaps reassigning someone or moving desks around so Oscar wouldn’t have to see the poster.

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Michael, fresh from a seminar on conflict resolution, tries a different tack. He asks Oscar and Angela to state their side of the disagreement using “I” emotion messages. Angela claims that the poster inspires her to believe that the children are the true artists. Oscar claims that the poster is kitsch: “It destroys art, it destroys souls. This is so much more offensive to me than hard-core porno!”5 Michael takes a deep breath and asks them each for a solution. Angela says, “How about I leave it up?” Oscar says, “How about she takes it down?” Michael’s secretary, Pam, suggests that Angela can keep it up on Tuesdays and Thursdays (a classic compromise that everyone shoots down). Michael’s solution? Take a photo of the poster and have it made into a T-shirt that Oscar wears. Angela can look at it all day and Oscar doesn’t have to see the poster on the wall anymore. Both sides reluctantly agree and Michael shouts out, “Win-win-win!” (Oscar and Angela win, obviously, but Michael wins too for successfully resolving the conflict.) Well, the truth is, no one wins. Neither Oscar nor Angela is happy with the solution. And as the day wears on, Michael learns that the conflict resolution strategies he employs bring up more broken relationships in the office than he’s prepared to handle. What started as a trickle between Angela and Oscar ends up being a flood by the end of the episode. If conflict avoidance solutions try to run from the conflict and conflict management endeavors to deal with people where they are by competing or accommodating, then conflict resolution attempts to move the parties beyond their stated positions in conflict toward their underlying interests.6 In other words, instead of taking conflict as a given, it asks why are we taking the position that we are taking in conflict.

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This is an obvious improvement to solving conflict. Understanding the whys of a conflict gives us much more data to come up with an effective solution. Conflict resolution and alternative dispute resolution (ADR) approaches attempt to give people alternatives to divorcing, never speaking to each other again, or suing each other. Businesses are demanding that more and more contractual disputes be resolved by arbitration or mediation. Diplomats employ sophisticated negotiation skills in an attempt to avoid war. Fewer acrimonious divorces, lawsuits, and wars is a very good goal. People who engage in mediation or arbitration often report that they are happier with the outcomes of the conflict. However, human relationships are complicated, and their whys can be misleading. Conflict resolution philosophy can be employed based on the smog view with the same assumptions about human beings that conflict avoidance and management have. When it is, conflict resolution can be done at a superficial level where the outcome often looks a lot like Oscar wearing a T-shirt that symbolizes everything he hates, Angela’s poster being controlled by the person who wanted it taken down in the first place, and all parties, Michael included, trying to convince themselves that they are happy with these options. For example, many approaches to conflict resolution take on a negotiation approach that, in the name of fairness, tries to split outcomes between parties, often at the expense of leaving critical needs on the table (figure 7).

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Demands

Concessions

Figure 7. Conflict resolution—compromise.

However, a lot of research shows that when people 7 to focus more on what engage in a compromise, Figure they tend they gave up in the negotiation instead of what they received.7 Compromising typically doesn’t lead to lasting solutions. In many conflicts, something deeper than self-interest motivates the people involved. What if many issues are driven by deeper problems in a relationship? What happens if employees are motivated by more than just money, or the citizens of a country are willing to break the law for the liberation of their people? Economists and political scientists call these people nonrational actors. That’s a dehumanizing label that obscures what they really are. We all, in the churning sea of conflict, act and think irrationally when we are afraid of conflict— even economists! Conflict resolution as a technique works well when people see conflict from a cocoon perspective and are practicing dangerous love. But if we are stuck in the smog view, it typically fails to provide lasting results. William Ury, the author of Getting to Yes with Yourself, offers this admission after thirty years of work as a mediator— to get people to their real interests, you often have to get them out of the smog mindset:

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Gradually, over the decades of mediating in a variety of difficult conflicts, from family feuds and boardroom battles to labor strikes and civil wars, I have come to the conclusion that the greatest obstacle to getting what we really want in life is not the other party, as difficult as he or she can be. The biggest obstacle is actually ourselves. . . . Underlying our poor reactions in moments of conflict is an adversarial “win-lose” mindset, the assumption that either we can get what we want or they can—but not both. . . . Even if we want to cooperate, we are afraid that the other person will take advantage of us. What sustains this “win-lose” mindset is a sense of scarcity, the fear that there is just not enough to go around, so we need to look out for ourselves even at the expense of others. All too often, the result of such “win-lose” thinking is that all sides lose.8

When we take our smog perception of conflict to conflict resolution, all it does is deal with conflict at the surface level. It’s a dressed-up form of conflict management. The win-lose mentality still has its death grip on the process. But take a cocoon perception of conflict and suddenly solutions are more than just temporary respites from conflict; they actually transform the dynamic between two people in conflict.

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CHAPTER 6

HOW A COCOON THINKER TRANSFORMS CONFLICT As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. —WILFRE D ARLAN P E TE RSON

“I saw your daughter the other day with her boyfriend at the beach,” one of my coworkers casually mentioned at a faculty meeting. “How old is she anyway?” She was fifteen. I had no idea she had a boyfriend. She had been lying to me for weeks about who she was hanging out with.

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My first reaction? I wanted to hide in shame. How did I not know about this? Why didn’t she just tell me? I’m a terrible parent. What’s wrong with me? My second reaction a few minutes after the pity party was over? I wanted my daughter to pay. “Why is she lying to me? Doesn’t she know that we have an explicit rule that prohibits dating until she’s sixteen? What’s wrong with her?” These responses look pretty different, but they have two things in common: I had the smog view of conflict and I was seeing both my daughter and myself as objects. The first response led pretty naturally to a conflict avoidance space. I didn’t want to confront her with her lie. It would only make her like me less. She’d trust me less. Confronting the conflict would only create more distance between us. The second response led naturally to competition or forcing. I was going to make her pay, teach her a lesson, force her to start telling the truth and follow the family rules. Both were destined to fail. Both were leading us down the path toward destructive conflict. The problem was, I couldn’t see that. From the smog perspective, every option available to me would only worsen the conflict. The conflict wouldn’t go anywhere constructive until I let go of my fear of conflict with my daughter. It took a car ride home with my partner to start seeing my daughter and my relationship with her a little differently. “You’re not going to believe what our daughter did,” was how the conversation began. I then laid out everything that I had heard and all the subsequent information I had obtained by snooping around social media. It was clear my partner was a little taken aback by what she was hearing. But my partner is a cocoon thinker. And her response took me off guard.

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“Do you blame her?” she responded. “Do you blame her for not telling you about her boyfriend?” “Yes,” I stammered while trying to figure out what she was getting at. “Yes, you know we teach all our kids to always tell the truth.” “We do,” my partner said calmly. “But look at it from her perspective for a minute. You’ve told all your daughters that you didn’t want them to date and get married until they were thirty. You’ve tortured her sisters’ boyfriends in the past. And since she’s fifteen, I’m sure she thought there’s no way you’re ever going to even entertain the idea that she could see him, let alone date him. Are you really surprised she hid it all from you?” “Yes . . . ,” I said, though my confidence was waning. “She’s a really good girl. She’s never lied to me before.” “Which makes it even more heartbreaking,” my partner continued. “She must be feeling terribly guilty. She’s not a liar. It must be hurting her to know that she can’t share this with us and instead has to sneak around. I can’t imagine the stress she’s going through.” My daughter had been distant lately, less connected. In my selfish efforts to protect her and keep her close to me, I had pushed her away. The feelings of guilt swept over me. I felt awful. And a third conflict style, accommodation, began to creep into my head. I’ll just let this go this time, I told myself. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t interfere. I owe her that. My partner pushed back again when I shared my plan. “You owe it to her to reconnect, to help her feel like she can talk to you. This is your chance.” I spent the next day thinking about my daughter and what my partner had said. I was starting to see how I had

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contributed to the conflict. I knew the next conversation I had with my daughter would be an important one. If I was going to practice dangerous love, I had to take the following steps: 1. Let go of my fear of conflict. I had to transform my smog view into a cocoon view. 2. Let go of my fear of my daughter and how she’d react. My partner was clearly seeing her as a person. I needed to as well. 3. Turn first. Our relationship needed me to be the first to act (figure 8). It was the only way I’d ever invite her to turn back toward me. No matter how awkward, emotional, or painful it might be, dangerous love was the only way. I was Miriam. She was Mahmoud. If I wanted this to go well, I had to turn first.

Both Turned Away

I Turn First

I Invite Her to Turn

Figure 8. Inviting my daughter to turn.

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I texted her the next morning and told her I’d be picking her up from school that afternoon—a fairly unusual occurrence. She texted me “Why?” several times throughout the day. I didn’t respond. “Why did you pick me up, Dad?” she asked, looking uncomfortable in the passenger seat of my Jeep. “I just wanted to talk to you,” I responded. She looked as if she wanted to jump out while we were going 45 miles per hour down the street. “Why?” she pressed, clearly nervous now that I knew more than she wanted me to. “Because I think I’ve been mistreating you,” I responded. Her defensiveness began melting away before the next words could leave my lips. “I know about your boyfriend. And I know you haven’t been telling us the truth about where you’ve been. And I think a lot of that has to do with me.” She looked really confused. “I’ve been sending you the wrong message about boys. They are going to be a big part of your life—maybe the most important part. More than anything else, I want you to find a loving relationship that you can feel joy in. I’m sorry that I’ve been sending you the opposite message. I don’t blame you for hiding him from us. If I was in your shoes, I would’ve done the same thing.” She was speechless at first. Then a smile came across her face. “So, I can date him, then?” “No,” I responded. She looked as if she was ready to jump out of the Jeep again.

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“The family rules are still the rules,” I continued. “The dating rules aren’t going to change. I understand that probably feels really unfair and painful. But we don’t feel that dating is good for you and our family until you’re sixteen. There are a lot of reasons, and we can talk about them. But I am committed to finding a solution that works for you and for us.” “What do you mean?” she said. “I want to date him. What other solution can there be?” I spent the next thirty minutes mostly asking questions and listening to her answers. I kept digging to understand what she needed and how we could find a way to meet those needs without violating a larger family principle. Once she knew I was serious, she joined in on the collaborative problem-solving. Within forty-five minutes we had a plan. There were hugs and tears after that. Then came the key moment for me. “Do you still trust me?” she asked. “I really want you to trust me.” “Yeah,” I said. “We just need to keep trusting each other.” Things went pretty well after that. In fact, I think our relationship got stronger than it had ever been before. Using conflict transformation to engage in constructive conflict and collaborative problem-solving can do that. Despite all the words spilled on conflict avoidance, management, and resolution in the last chapter, dangerous love is about conflict transformation and reconciliation. Having a cocoon view of conflict moves us beyond the limitations of conflict management and resolution to the possibilities of conflict transformation and reconciliation.

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Conflict Transformation What is it that’s transformed in conflict transformation? At the heart of virtually every conflict are people in relationship with each other. Sometimes that relationship binds them together in love. Other times, they are bonded in the clutches of mutual pain and anguish.1 While some conflicts are almost totally driven by data or material things, in most cases, relationships lie at the core of conflict—how I see myself and you in relationship. My conflict with my daughter was one of those conflicts. It really wasn’t about dating, though it sure looked that way on the surface. It was about us. And I had two choices: I could practice self-preservation or us-preservation. From the smog perspective, my first instinct was to go the self-preservation route with conflict avoidance or conflict management techniques like competition, forcing, or accommodation. From the cocoon perspective, however, I desired to engage in collaborative problem-solving in a way that invited connection, not more disconnection. When I see you as the enemy, the other, or someone who is opposing me, almost any form of conflict avoidance, management, or resolution is unlikely to produce lasting results. However, if my perception of the relationship changes, the entire conflict dynamic has the ability to transform into something that can bring hope, collaboration, and even peace.2 Conflict transformation happens whenever one person in a relationship or group lets go of the fear of conflict, and the fear of the people he or she is in conflict with, and fundamentally shifts from seeing people as objects to seeing them as people. When that shift occurs, the ability to engage in problem-solving and create conditions where people can live, thrive, and collaborate together dramatically improves.

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The primary conflict style of conflict transformation is collaboration. We practice collaboration when we have a high level of concern for our own outcomes and a high level of concern for the outcomes of others. (See figure 2 in chapter 1.) Remember, dangerous love allows me to see the humanity of another person so clearly that his or her needs and desires matter as much to me as my own, regardless of how the other person sees me. The idea behind collaboration is to try to find a creative solution to our problems that will give both of us what we need. When we practice collaboration, we no longer need to defend ourselves or avoid or give in. It puts us-preservation over self-preservation in conflict. It invites dangerous love by helping us realize we can both get what we need. While collaboration is considered an ideal style in conflict mediation and negotiation, it has its drawbacks. Primarily, it’s typically much more time-consuming than the other styles, and it’s difficult to achieve without the participation of both parties. As you can imagine, trying to engage in a collaborativestyle negotiation or problem-solving session at home or at work or between warring religious or ethnic groups while both sides are separated and mired in the smog view of conflict would be almost impossible. No wonder collaboration takes so much time and is so difficult to achieve. However, those limitations disappear when the people in conflict begin to see each other as people. Once that happens, they are suddenly alive to the needs of others, even their supposed enemies. They begin to matter the same way we matter. That changes everything. Conflict transformation happens when a struggling married couple remembers why they married each other

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in the first place. It happens when parents are willing to reconsider the stories they’ve told about a wayward child who has been estranged from the family. It happens when two coworkers recognize that combining forces, instead of withholding information from each other, will make them both more successful in achieving the goals of their organization. It happens when two groups of different faiths discover that the things that connect them are more powerful than those that separate them. It happens when we let go of the fear that blinds us from seeing people for who they really are and gather the courage to love flawed, frustrated, poorly behaved instigators of conflict as people with hopes, dreams, and challenges very much like our own.

From Conflict to Transformation to Reconciliation Reconciliation, as an idea, goes even deeper. It goes beyond regaining our ability to see people as people again. It opens up space for us to build a stronger future together. It comes with a commitment to acknowledge what we have done to be hurtful to others, a determination to forgive those who have hurt us, a responsibility to restore what others have lost (their reputations, self-esteem, money, property, and so on) because of our words or actions as part of the conflict, and finally a resolve to create spaces that nurture seeing people as people and collaboration to minimize the chances that conflict ever becomes destructive again.3 Reconciliation creates the space to invite those in our lives affected by destructive conflict to move beyond hurt, through conflict, and onward toward building a future that is characterized by dangerous love. By turning first, we invite them to turn. (See figure 3 in chapter 1.)

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Reconciliation happens when a sister forgives a brother and takes steps toward becoming reconnected. It happens when a CEO admits to her employees and shareholders that she hasn’t been truthful or fair in her business dealings and vows to change. It happens when the perpetrators of horrific crimes willingly come forward and offer, in whatever way they can, to make their victims whole. It happens when countries begin to reexamine the customs and laws that have divided their people and put into place new structures that encourage integration instead of separation. The ideas of conflict transformation and reconciliation include lofty goals that go beyond the limitations of shortterm negotiations that focus on the positions and interests of the parties. Reconciliation refocuses on long-term efforts to tease out deep-rooted causes of conflict that fuel the social and symbolic values of the parties and provides transformational space.4 While conflict avoidance can give us space from conflict that makes us uncomfortable, conflict management can stop escalation, and conflict resolution can help settle disputes when they involve data, material goods, or scarce resources, none of these approaches go deeper to two main areas where conflict thrives: the relationship level and the cultural world level.5 So how do we make it happen? The challenge is bridging a rather large gap between conflict avoidance and conflict management on one side of the river (the smog view of conflict) and conflict transformation and reconciliation (the cocoon view) on the other. The following exercise can get us started.

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Conflict Styles Clearly seeing what side of the river we are on is important. Let’s return to the conflict you began looking at in the exercise at the end of chapter 3—the one you’ve been looking at from the smog perspective. What conflict style have you been engaged in with the person or group of people you are struggling with? Circle as many as you feel apply: Avoidance. Have you been keeping everything in, avoiding awkward conversations or even avoiding being in the same space with them? Do you change the topic of conversation if something uncomfortable comes up? Do you feel anxiety, stress, or tension in your relationship? Are you emotionally disconnected? Accommodation. Do you quickly give in when conflict arises? Do you keep your opinions to yourself and just agree to keep harmony in the relationship? Do you feel resentful that your needs aren’t being addressed? Do you feel guilty asking for or getting what you want? Do you feel like a martyr or victim? Are you the only person in the relationship who is really trying? Force or Competition. Do you feel competitive in the relationship? Do you believe that the only way to get what you want is to win the conflict? Are your solutions to the problem the only ones that make sense or seem rational? Are you afraid of appearing weak, soft, or enabling if you acknowledge or concede that you might not be right? Are your values or opinions or being right the most important factors to you?

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Conflict Resolution. Have you been trying to work out a solution that seems fair? Are you offering to give up things if they give up things too? Are you pursuing a strategy where you split the difference? Are they complaining that the solutions you keep suggesting are unfair or are asking them to give up too much? Or are you complaining that the solutions they keep suggesting are unfair or are asking you to give up too much? Don’t worry if you find yourself engaged in one or all of these styles. What’s important is that you see that you are using them and, hopefully, that none of them are getting you across the river. While any one of them might provide temporary respite, none of them are providing the lasting solutions that you seek. Now imagine what it would take to get across the river. Does it feel daunting? Is the bridge too long or too rickety? Are you worried that the person or people you are in conflict with won’t meet you in the middle? Does the conflict appear to be impossible to bridge without the other party’s changing? If conflict is our inability to collaboratively engage in problem-solving with other people, then why don’t we just move to collaboration? The next chapter explains the chasm that makes that journey seem so dangerous.

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CHAPTER 7

THE CHASM OF SEPARATION AND SELF-DECEPTION Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself. — LUDWIG WIT TG E N S TE IN

At this point in the book, perhaps you are thinking, “I get smog and cocoon views of conflict and that my conflict style is informed by each view. But what if my fears are real? Dangerous love is scary. The folks I’m in conflict with aren’t like your daughter. They can’t be trusted. It feels too risky.” There is a major gap between what we think about conflict and also, in turn, about what we do about it. This gap is what keeps us from practicing dangerous love, from being the first to turn. And in the center of that gap lie two major obstacles—separation and self-deception. They are the reason that crossing the bridge between fear and love feels so daunting.

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Separation Walls Jennifer was exasperated. This was her third visit to my office and things weren’t going well at home. She had tried helping Hirota be a better husband. She knew that an intercultural marriage posed unique challenges. She knew that a pattern of miscommunication and misunderstanding was rocking the foundations of her marriage. For the last few weeks she had left my office hopeful after a premediation session only to come back frustrated. “I think the problem is that he doesn’t see me as a person,” she confided. “I can see him, but every time I try to get him to see me, it’s like I’m nothing.” She started to wipe a tear away from her eye. When I asked her how she was trying to get him to see her as a person, she straightened up in her chair. “By getting him to come to a mediation session with you. I told him if he could just spend a few hours talking with you, he’d see that he needs to change too and that it would help our marriage.” There’s a lot to unpack in Jennifer’s conflict story. But I want to focus on one particular aspect of it. The first obstacle in the gap to getting to real conflict transformation and reconciliation is something called separation.1 Have you ever noticed that when you’re really angry at a partner or a child, the physical distance between you grows? Have you noticed yourself literally with your back up against the wall in a difficult conversation? Or pretending you’re asleep? Or ignoring phone calls or texts from the other person? Or avoiding someone in the hallway or the break room? Or pretending to be on the phone when you see someone heading your way? In the larger global sphere, think about how many times conflict leads to the expelling of a group or the building of fences or walls to separate the two sides. Consider the

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segregation of neighborhoods and cities or even genocide— the ultimate form of separation, where one group decides that the other group must cease to exist. The idea behind separation is that when two or more people get in conflict with one another, they tend to separate—both physically and emotionally.2 How can I see the humanity of my spouse, coworker, or neighbor if I can’t even stand to be in the same space with the person? Jennifer wants to engage with Hirota, but Hirota doesn’t want to engage with Jennifer. Perhaps he views conflict as smog. (Actually, he’d tell me later that “conflict as a volcano” was the proper metaphor.) And if he does, getting in a room with his wife, especially when she’s telling him that he’ll hear things he doesn’t want to hear and he’ll have to change things he doesn’t want to change, is akin to playing a game that my kids love called “The Floor Is Lava.” In that game, my kids do everything in their power to avoid touching the floor. The floor, they imagine, is lava, and anyone who touches it is burned alive and thus out of the game. They jump between chairs and tables, throw safe pillows on the ground, anything to avoid getting burned. Conflict, to Hirota, and to so many of us, is “The Floor Is Lava” game. He’s trying to stay as far away from it as he can. In conflict, people create distance from one another both as a protection mechanism and because they’ve convinced themselves that the other person or other side is wrong or evil and they need to create psychological distance. A major correlation exists between what we think about conflict and what we do about it. Fear not only limits our willingness to engage the humanity of another person but also limits the possible solutions to problems. Separation is a major obstacle. But the second problem in the gap is even more intimidating. It’s self-deception.

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Self-deception convinces us that the only solution to the problem is for others to stop being the problem.

The Self-Deception Paradox Eventually Hirota grudgingly agreed to a joint mediation session. Jennifer was thrilled. She knew that Hirota would now see her challenges and problems and change. I wasn’t so confident. Hirota was reluctant to open up at first. He admitted that he had challenges as a husband and was trying to meet his wife’s needs but didn’t add much in the way of detail. Jennifer started getting frustrated. She kept interrupting Hirota, filling in the blanks with how difficult he was as a husband whenever he was vague. She kept using the words “my truth” as if somehow it was going to convince Hirota that what she was saying was the truth. It didn’t. And thirty minutes into the session, Hirota finally decided to tell “his truth.” It wasn’t pretty. He began discussing in vivid detail the ways Jennifer was a problem for him. Jennifer was unable to see or consider Hirota’s truth in the moment. The more details Hirota provided, the angrier Jennifer grew. She eventually stood up and walked out the door. On her way out, she told both of us that this session was a waste of time. Talking wouldn’t accomplish anything. She was done. Just forty-five minutes earlier she said her deepest desire was to get Hirota in the room to talk. Now? She never wanted to talk to either of us again. If you can manage to get the two people or parties in the room together, what happens when both sides claim that they aren’t the problem and therefore the other side needs to

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change? Or they admit they have a problem but believe their problem is a result of the other side’s problems and therefore they won’t change until the other side changes? This paradox at the heart of deep-rooted problems is called self-deception. The Arbinger Institute defines selfdeception as “the problem of not knowing and resisting the possibility that one has a problem.”3 What happens when a friend comes to you and starts describing a problem he has and it becomes apparent to you, rather quickly, that your friend is either causing the problem or contributing to it, but he is completely blind to his culpability in the problem he describes? I’m sure you’re thinking, “Well, there’s a simple solution to that. I would just tell my friend, ‘Hey, this is your fault. You’re the one messing everything up. Stop it, and your problem will go away!’” Except that you know as well as I do how we react when people tell us we have a problem. What happens? We get angry and claim that our friends aren’t supporting us. We push back. In short, we resist any suggestion that we have a problem. This second part of the definition is what creates the paradox: Self-deception isn’t just having a problem and not knowing you have a problem. It’s also resisting any suggestion that you have a problem.4 The primary way that self-deception deceives us is by convincing us that the people we are in relationship with during conflict aren’t actually people at all. They are objects that do not deserve to be seen the same way we do. Selfdeception convinces us that the negative connection we feel toward someone can be solved by either forcing it or breaking it.

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The deception part of self-deception arises from the fact that people are actually people, not objects—no matter how badly they are treating us or we are treating them. Disconnecting doesn’t disconnect us at all. It just bonds us to others negatively. Our smog lens does not protect us. It simply creates the illusion of self-protection. In every way it is the more “dangerous” lens to cling to in conflict. We are always in relationship.5 It’s up to us to choose which type. Philosopher Martin Buber argued that no matter what we are doing and who we are with, we are always in the world in either an “I-Thou” or “I-It” way. Buber described an I-Thou relationship as a symmetrical one. In the relationship, you and I count the same. We both have needs, wants, fears, hopes, and desires, and yours are no better or worse than my own. You are as real to me as I am to myself (figure 9).6 The I-It relationship is an asymmetrical one. You are no longer a Thou. You are an It. Your needs, wants, fears, hopes, and desires are not as valuable as mine are. You are somehow less than I am—less real, less important. Or perhaps, in certain manifestations, you are more than I am— more real, more important (figure 10).

Figure 9. I-Thou relationship.

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Figure 10. I-It relationship.

In both cases, I-Thou and I-It, we are still in relationship. However, we are connected in two very different ways. One offers the possibilitiesFigure of collaboration, joy, and love. 10 The other offers pain, suffering, and anguish. But nonetheless, we are always connected. Understanding that connection is the key to bridging the gap between love and fear in conflict.

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CHAPTER 8

BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN FEAR AND LOVE In a real sense all life is interrelated. All men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. —MAR TIN LUTHE R KIN G JR.

“Seeing people as Its has been the key to my success,” one of the top athletes in his sport once told me. I was doing a workshop with a group of high-performance athletes and their coaches, and we were off to a rocky start. Just introducing the concept of seeing people in the Thou way versus the It way was causing discontent in the group. Other athletes in the room chimed in with support of the It way of seeing. These athletes, all of whom were successful

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in their individual sports, had been trained to think that they and they alone determined their success or failure. Their sports were incredibly demanding and required years of training and personal self-discipline. Most in the room had given up on many of their personal relationships to try to get a gold medal someday. They viewed others around them as potential obstacles in their path for the gold. Their key to success was tuning out all distractions—especially people. Relationships were sticky and took away one’s focus. The more they saw everyone around them as Its, they reasoned, the more they could focus on I. About thirty minutes into the workshop I could see we weren’t getting anywhere. I took a break and started pacing the halls. I’ve encountered resistance to the idea of I-Thou relationships before but never with a group more convinced that focusing on their self-interest was the only way they could survive competitively. As I paced, I remembered a series of trainings I had done with a group of Mãori, the indigenous people from the country of Aotearoa, or New Zealand. After I had finished doing a Dangerous Love workshop with them, one of their leaders told me that what they had learned reminded him of an ancient Mãori proverb: He aha te mea nui o te ao? He tãngata! He tãngata! He tãngata! (What is the most important thing in the world? It is people! It is people! It is people!)

In their wharenui (a large ceremonial building) you will see carvings of their ancestors, all standing on one another’s shoulders. They believe that they would not exist without all that their ancestors had done to build the foundations that

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they walk on today. They honor them. They can recite their ancestral lineage. And they believe that they are still, quite literally, connected to them. This connection is what’s most important to a Mãori. It cannot be broken. It is in one’s DNA. There is no me, only we. When we restarted the training with the athletes, I put away the slide show and began asking questions of the group. “How did you get introduced to the sport that you now love?” I asked a few of the athletes. They all told stories of a parent or relative who had played the same sport and got them involved. “Were you just naturally great at the sport, or did it take a lot of training?” The athletes spoke of endless, exhausting hours training. “How did you get to your trainings?” Almost everyone answered that their parents took them. “Were the classes free or did you have to pay for them?” They paid. Or more accurately, their parents did. “And in these trainings, did you train alone or did you have a coach?” All of them had a coach. Some of them had many coaches. “Did your coach teach you things that you would not have known otherwise?” While not all the athletes liked their coach, they all could acknowledge at least some learning from their coach. “Did you train with other athletes?” Again, even though many of the athletes were in individual types of sports, they all trained with others. “Do you think you would’ve enjoyed your sport as much if you didn’t have any peers to train with?” They all shook their heads no. Many of the peers they trained with

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had become their best friends—the only people who really understood what they were going through. “Have you ever had a bad performance?” They all nodded their heads yes. “Have your parents, your coach, or your peers helped you process a bad performance or get through it?” Again, the answer was yes. “And in those moments, when they were helping you, do you think they were seeing you as an It or a Thou?” They all knew the answer already. “What if they had seen you as an It? Would the way they saw you have affected your performance?” They all knew the answer already. “How about when you are seeing your parents, your coach, or your peers as Its? Does it create conflict? Does it affect your performance?” I saw slow nods around the room. Buber was right. There is no I. Just We. In moments of self-deception, we begin to believe that I can be separated from Thou by turning Thou into an It. But Buber argues that I can only become I through my relationship with Thou or It, so “truth is never just mine or yours, but ours.”1 Buber believed that this connection, I-Thou and I-It, ultimately colored how we see others and the world around us. It dramatically redefines the stories we tell about ourselves and one another. It controls our perception. We are connected either in constructive ways or in destructive ways. Every time those athletes stepped on a field, or court, or rink, or into a pool, they stood on the shoulders of all the people who helped get them there. They didn’t do it alone.

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That single revelation changed everything that happened with us the next two days. The athletes suddenly understood their success in a way that motivated them to be the first to turn—toward their families, toward their coaches, toward their peers. They were deeply connected to them whether they believed it or not. And deciding to turn toward the people in their life who influenced them was as important as any skill they could learn in their sport. Seeing others as Its is at the heart of the smog view of conflict. How can I successfully transform a conflict with an It—a disrespectful, selfish, unkind, unreasonable, overemotional, defensive person? Even more basic, how can I love someone like that? That’s not dangerous love. It’s stupid love. Seeing people as Its immediately invites fear and selfishness in a way that stifles collaboration. It invites a hyper focus on self that ignores the realities and needs of others. That’s why the Arbinger Institute refers to this sort of view of others as an inward mindset.2 The focus remains firmly on me at a time when it desperately needs to include us and hinders our ability to effectively engage in problem-solving. However, if I can recover my ability to see other people as Thous, I then see both them and conflict differently. The straight and narrow path of the smog view opens wide. My new view offers possibilities, opportunities to be creative, understanding and empathy, humility and forgiveness. It literally changes everything.

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I-IT versus I-THOU We already identified our personal conflict styles in chapter 6. Now it’s time to tie them into how we are seeing the people we are in conflict with. Are you in an I-It or I-Thou relationship with the person or people you are in conflict with? Table 1 can help you decide. You don’t have to struggle with all the thoughts in the first column to be in an I-It relationship. Nor do you have to feel this way all the time. But think about the times when you are in an I-It relationship. Can you see why you’d choose avoidance, accommodation, or force to get what you want? These styles all have something in common—they lack the mutuality of I-Thou. And can you see why seeing people that way leads to conflict that feels frustrating and never-ending at best and dangerous at worst? Table 1. I-It and I-Thou statements or thoughts I-It

I-Thou

They are creating challenges or problems for me.

We are struggling with our challenges or problems.

They are useful to me.

We can be helpful to each other.

Only my dreams, needs, and desires matter. My dreams, needs, and desires don’t really matter.

We have dreams, needs, and desires.

They don’t affect me.

We affect each other.

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To get to real collaboration, we need to see the people we are in conflict with in an I-Thou way. Far from being timeconsuming, collaboration, when we are practicing dangerous love, is often the most efficient way to get things done. Unfortunately, seeing people as Thous instead of Its— especially after seeing them as Its for a while—is easier said than done. The next few chapters help explain how self-deception can become self-replicating over time.

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CHAPTER 9

MISTAKES WERE MADE The brain is designed with blind spots and one of its cleverest tricks is to confer on us the comforting delusion that we, personally, do not have any. —C AR OL TAVRIS

“I have a little experiment for all of us this weekend,” I said to my freshman Introduction to Peacebuilding class on a late January afternoon. We had just finished reading the first half of The Anatomy of Peace, by the Arbinger Institute. The book is the best and clearest explanation I’ve ever read about the dangers of self-deception and how it escalates conflict to the point that it seems unsolvable. The Anatomy of Peace tells the fictional story of Lou and Carol, two parents who have just checked their child, Cory, into a wilderness rehab program. Lou and Carol attend a workshop led by the founders of the program, a Palestinian man named Yusuf and an Israeli man, Avi.

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Yusuf offers a challenge to everyone in the room, including Lou and Carol, as they break for lunch: One quick thing before you go. While you are out, I challenge you to see everyone you encounter as a person— the driver in the car next to you, the person who waits on you at whatever restaurant you go to, your spouse or partner you are with, and so on. Make a point of seeing others over the next ninety minutes as people and see what happens as a result.1

My homework assignment to my class expanded upon the challenge in the book: “I want you to try, for the entire weekend, to see every single person you encounter—your roommates, your teachers, your partner, your parents, the cafeteria workers, random students you bump into at the library—every one of them as a person. I will do the same. Then we will report on what we learned.” The experiment is typically very impactful. More often than not, we fail at it. Sometimes we succeed. Either outcome gives us a greater insight into a world that we rarely take the time to see. As the professor, I obviously have had more opportunities to do this experiment than others. The ideas of the Arbinger Institute had changed the way I practiced conflict transformation over the last few years. For me, the assignment would be a snap—or so I thought. The next Tuesday afternoon our class met for the first time since the assignment. Several students told the class what had happened with their experiment over the weekend. One student had decided to eat at a table filled with Koreans—despite the fact that she was Japanese and didn’t really get along with Koreans. She found out she had a lot in common with them.

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Another student said the experiment with her boyfriend lasted about two hours. Then she found out he was cheating on her. “Do you have to see someone as a person when they are a lying pig?” she angrily asked the class. Everyone laughed. I demurred. I had an experience that I wanted to tell the class about. “Last Friday afternoon, something rare occurred,” I began. “It was three o’clock. I had finished all my work for the week. My schedule was clear. I was free and could do anything I wanted. I had a sense to take my children to the beach. Sure, I would’ve preferred to go by myself. But I was seeing them as people, so I took them.” “Everyone had a great . . .” my voice trailed off. My students were staring at me. I felt something was off. The students sat in awkward silence as the events of Friday replayed in my mind. Images and sounds of my children crying came flooding in. Glimpses of them resisting my efforts to take them to the beach and me threatening to ground them if they didn’t come swirled inside my head. The beach trip was a disaster. It wasn’t until that moment, as I stood in front of the class, that it hit me. I had failed our homework assignment that weekend. I had failed it in the most epic of ways. The story I was beginning to tell the class was classic self-deception. The part about being done with work at three on Friday was true. It was also true that we had gone to the beach Friday afternoon. Everything else? Total self-deception. I took a deep breath, swallowed my pride, and began telling my class what really happened.

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The story began that Friday afternoon as I leaned back in my chair in the office, thinking of what I could do with my spare time the rest of the day. “It’s been a long time since you went surfing,” my mind said. “You should take that up again. Just sneak into the garage, grab your board, and head out to the beach. Just you and the surf. No kids. Some ‘me’ time. You need this. It will be fun.” I packed up my laptop, slipped out the door, and did something I had never done before. I began walking home a different way. Every day, twice a day, I walked the same path from my home to the university and then back again. But on this day, for reasons I didn’t yet understand, I was taking the scenic route home. About five minutes into the walk across the university, I passed the school’s ballroom and witnessed a man who appeared to be in his late fifties, soaked in sweat, slowly setting up chairs. From a quick glance it looked like he had set up twenty-five or so chairs and had a hundred left to put out. As I walked by, a small, quiet sense of helpfulness came to me. It said simply, “You should stop and help this man with the chairs.” I paused for about three seconds and then kept walking home. I didn’t follow the sense. As I continued to walk home, an uncomfortable tsunami of guilt began to wash over me. I had left that poor man alone to set up all those chairs so I could go surfing. I was blowing the homework assignment I had given the class! My mind was aching from all the dissonance and almost immediately came to the rescue with a handful of justifications to alleviate the tension. As I walked to my home,

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I began building an airtight defense for myself that would make a criminal law professor proud. “Why did the university leave that job for just one man?” I told myself. “Typical. They are so inefficient. They are the ones not seeing their workers as people. “It’s not my job,” my justifying brain continued. “The custodians aren’t showing up at my office to help me grade papers or teach my class. Everyone has their job to do. It’s not my responsibility. “I bet that guy procrastinated all day,” the justification continued. “Here I’ve been working hard, and now I have a few hours of free time. Should I really spend it helping a procrastinator? “Is there anything wrong with a little self-love? A little me time?” All those justifications sounded good, but none of them seemed to assuage the guilt. Then the dissonance kryptonite came. “My kids would be so disappointed if I had stopped and helped him. I never come home early. They’ll be so excited when I come home and tell them we are all going surfing this afternoon! Family is the most important thing! “Yes! Yes! This is for my kids,” I told myself. “My kids need me. They need to go surfing. They need quality time. I’m not a bad guy. In fact, I’m an amazing dad and therefore an amazing parent.” My students laughed. They knew very well my plan was to go surfing alone. Self-deception had changed the plan to make me feel better about what I had done. I bounded up the stairs to my home, made a grand entrance, and announced in an unusually loud and cheerful voice: “Hey everyone, I’m home! Early! And guess what— drumroll, please—we are going to the beach!”

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My family didn’t receive the news as well as I had hoped. “Dad, I’ve got a party in a couple of hours, I need to get ready,” my teenage daughter replied. My son quickly followed, “I’ve got band practice on Friday afternoons, Dad. Sorry, I’m out.” “No worries,” I thought. I have a ten-year-old who has two gills for lungs. There’s no way she would turn down a chance to go to the beach with her dad. “I already went to the beach earlier today,” my ten-yearold replied as she plopped down on the couch, fresh out of the shower and now in her pajamas. “I don’t want to go again.” “Oh no,” I thought. Panic began to rise within me. My justification for not helping the man with the chairs was crumbling around me. What to do? “We are going to the beach!” I said with a firmer voice. “All of us. We don’t spend enough time together as a family, and I’m putting a stop to it. If I can drop everything at work and come home early just to be with you, then you can drop what you are doing and be with me!” My children began protesting. The louder they got, the angrier I became. “Can’t these self-absorbed children see that their dad is trying to help them have fun?” I said to myself. After a little back and forth, the fatherly foot came down: “You have five minutes to get your suits on and get in the car,” I said loudly. “If you aren’t in the car when I leave, you’re grounded for the weekend.” I angrily went to the closet and put on my swimsuit, jammed the surfboards in the car, and waited—with the car running in the garage—for my kids to arrive. We had a crappy day at the beach. But damn it, we went. While my students had laughed at and applauded the other stories from their peers. Mine had them utterly

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disgusted. Self-deception, when we are in the process of viewing it in others, has that effect. How do you overcome the paradox of self-deception? How do you solve the problem of blindness when we actually resist any attempts by others to help us see? How do we ever get to transformation or reconciliation if we cannot and will not see each other? And why in the world would we ever engage in self-deception in the first place?

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CHAPTER 10

BUT NOT BY ME I have come to a frightening conclusion. I am the decisive element. . . . It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. . . . I possess tremendous power to make life . . . miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and [a person] humanized or de-humanized. — HAIM G IN OT T

Self-deception is a paradox because it seems impossible to solve. If we are blind to being a problem and others can’t suggest to us that we have a problem, the problem will never get solved. Self-deception is so easy to see in others and so difficult to see in ourselves. During my first Arbinger workshop as a participant, the facilitator gave us a list of people—spouse, children, parents, siblings, friends, coworkers, employers, neighbors, and so on—and asked us to choose one, just one, whom we saw as an object.

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Everyone around me was circling names left and right. Me? I went through the list a different way. “My partner? Oh, she definitely sees me as an object. My kids? I’m a total vehicle to them. They’d dump me on the nearest iceberg the minute I wasn’t useful to them.” Down the list I went. Every person I knew was self-deceived—every person, that is, but me. When I raised my hand and told the facilitator I couldn’t think of anyone, she smiled and quietly went through the list with me. I continued to resist the idea that I was seeing others as objects. She tried her best to sum up what I had told her over the past five minutes: “So, what you’re saying is that everyone you know—everyone you live with and work with—has this problem? Everyone but you? Is that right?” Oh. The peacebuilding professor was blind to the source of his own conflict. No matter our position or the knowledge we hold, no one is immune to self-deception—including me. One of the reasons self-deception is so hard to get our arms around is because it takes on many faces and masks depending on who we are and how we like to get justification. Sometimes our justifications sound wonderful to ourselves. For example, “I’m a peace professor, a mediator. I see everyone as a person. It’s my job. The people I’m mediating for? They have this problem. Some of them have major problems.” Other times our justifications make us look like idiots. For example, “Why am I such a bad father? Why am I so selfish? How am I ever going to get better? I have this problem. And I’m never going to get over it.” At times, our justifications will morph into a mask that, on the outside, appears confident and capable but inside is huddling in fear at the thought that we’ll be exposed. That was me, forcing my kids to go to the beach to look like

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a good father. Arbinger calls this the “need-to-be-seen-as” box, and it may be the most debilitating of all.1 After the workshop facilitator pointed out to me the incredulity of my statement—I was the only one I knew who didn’t suffer from self-deception and cognitive dissonance2—my justifications shifted dramatically. I was seeing everyone, every single person on that list, as an object. How could I possibly claim that I was good at peacebuilding when it was clear I’m actually objectifying everyone I know? Suddenly, I was anxious about my abilities to do this work and fearful that others would find out I wasn’t as peaceful as I pretended to be. When we feel that dissonance coming, we’ll take whatever justification is the easiest for us to get ahold of.3 While on the surface the justifications look very different from one another, at their core, they are just different flavors of the same thing—they give us an excuse to see others as Its.4 That is why conflict often gets the best of us. That is why we often feel weak and self-absorbed in conflict. Self-deception tells us that our justifications are actually reality. They convince us that others are to blame for how we see them. They excuse us from our accountability. They pardon us when we fail to see the Thou in others. They destroy the one thing that is telling us that something isn’t right between ourselves and others. They suffocate dissonance. They drown our deepest sense of what is right and wrong. When the dissonance is gone and our moral compasses have been compromised, we have difficulty looking honestly at ourselves, admitting our mistakes, and changing. Loving dangerously becomes impossible.

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E x e rci s e

Mistakes Were Made but Not by Me Everyone struggles with self-deception and cognitive dissonance. Unfortunately, we just can’t see them in ourselves, and if others point them out to us, we resist any suggestion that we are the problem. The key to overcoming them? It’s the ability to feel cognitive dissonance and see self-deception in ourselves.

Challenge 1 Think of a time that you had a sense of helpfulness toward a person that you didn’t follow in the last few weeks. For example, I was standing in line at a grocery store with a huge basket filled with groceries. I noticed the person behind me in line had just a couple of items. I had a sense to tell her to jump in front of me in line. But I didn’t do that. I made her wait. I was sitting on an airplane and the flight attendant asked if anyone would be willing to give up his or her seats so that a newlywed couple could sit together. The seat next to me was empty. I had a sense to raise my hand and volunteer. Instead I pretended to be asleep. After each incident happened, I had plenty of reasons that I could tell you about why I didn’t follow my sense— why I didn’t let the person get in front of me in line, why I didn’t let the newlywed couple have my seat. But if I did that, I’d be right back in the self-deception paradox.

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Challenge 2 After you think about your incident, can you tell it without giving justifications for why you did it? Can you sit with the dissonance that comes from not doing what you felt a sense to do? Pay attention to how this feels. What are you feeling? What do those feelings tell you about your conflict?

Challenge 3 Now tell someone you respect or admire the story without using any justifications. Call a friend or partner and say, “I have something to tell you . . .” It should take less than thirty seconds. Try it. Did telling the story just get harder now that you are worried what someone else will think of you? Do you have an overwhelming urge to explain your apparent insensitivity by telling him or her your justifications?

Challenge 4 Now think about the person or people you have been working through your conflict with. What are they struggling with right now? Have you been helping or hurting? And can you hold that view of them without excusing yourself or blaming them? Can you just hold on to the dissonance without justifying it away? If that’s hard or feels impossible, I understand. Maybe your senses of helpfulness are gone. Maybe the relationship you are thinking of has created such distance that you can’t see or feel the person anymore. When we seek to lessen dissonance through justification and let it guide our senses of what is most right, things get even harder. The next chapter explains why.

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CHAPTER 11

ESCALATING CONFLICT Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. — MAR TIN LUTHE R KIN G JR.

Once we begin to see others as Its, and once we begin to justify that change in the way we see them, all sorts of consequences naturally begin to unfold. Consider the person or people you’re in conflict with. Can you think of something they do that really bothers you? Something that really drives you crazy? Do they leave their socks on the floor or never put away their dishes? Are they constantly late? Are they inconsiderate or rude? Do they procrastinate, or are they sloppy in their work? Do they take what isn’t theirs? Are they too loud? Are they racist? Sexist? Too politically correct? Do they think their view of the world is the world?

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When we bring it to their attention or try to stop them from continuing the frustrating behavior, does the situation actually get worse? Do they become more obstinate? The more they continue to be frustrating and dig in their heels, do we push even harder or get even more exasperated? How we see others, and then how we treat them, powerfully influences how others see us. And how others see us, and how they treat us, powerfully influences how we see them. If I see you as a horrible person, as an It, and treat you that way, you will likely choose to see me as an It in return. And the more you see me as a horrible person and treat me that way, the more convinced I am that you actually are a monster and that my behavior is justified. This pattern happened with Miriam and Mahmoud in chapter 1. The Arbinger Institute calls this phenomenon “collusion,” and it’s a fascinating, revolutionary concept.1 Self-deception has a way of twisting our views of conflict to the point that even the smallest disagreements escalate in both size and intensity. The bigger the conflicts get, the more self-sustaining they become. Eventually they can spiral out of control.

The Seductive Dance of Conflict Spirals “I don’t get it.” Chuck, a senior manager in his sixties, furrowed his brow as I spoke. “What don’t you get?” I asked Chuck. Every Monday during our staff meeting, Chuck would interrupt and then eventually shoot down every new idea or proposal I had. “I’m trying to make it as clear as possible. What don’t you get?” I said, calm on the outside, flustered within.

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“I don’t get why anyone with any experience would ever suggest such a thing,” he said, shaking his head. “Then again, you don’t have any experience, do you?” Now everyone was staring at me. My insides burned; my fists clenched. Chuck got up and left. The rest of my team looked at me—some with knowing nods, others with disdain. The situation reached the point that every time I saw Chuck, I’d feel resistance toward him. Within six months, we were at war. My disdain for Chuck, along with my overblown sense of self-worth, led me to all sorts of pathetic behaviors. Clearly, I wasn’t seeing Chuck as a Thou. He didn’t count the same way I counted. When I was seeing and treating him that way—when I was making fun of him in meetings or not cc’ing him on emails or sabotaging him behind his back or ignoring his ideas, I invited him to see me as an It as well. And he did. The more Chuck sabotaged my plans, the more I became convinced that the way I was seeing Chuck was correct. And the more convinced I was that Chuck was not only old and uninformed but also a bad person, the harder I resisted every suggestion he made. And the more I resisted Chuck, the more he became convinced that the way he was seeing me was correct. And the more convinced he was that I was not only young and inexperienced but also a bad person, the harder he resisted every suggestion I made. If you had been able to pull Chuck aside in the moment and ask him who needed to change, what do you think he would have said? Me, right?

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And if you could’ve pulled me aside in the moment and asked me who needed to change, what do you think I would have said? Chuck, right? And if Chuck thinks I need to change and I think Chuck needs to change, then who changes? No one. How long would the conflict go on? In the moment, it looked as if it would never end. The truth was, it was going to go on until one or both of us were fired. Neither of us wanted that. Yet if you asked me what I wanted most out of this conflict spiral, what would I have said? Respect? To have my ideas seriously considered? To teach an old guy how to make it in a rapidly evolving business? To impress my bosses? In the eye of this conflict spiral, was I getting any of these? No. And if you asked Chuck what he wanted most out of this conflict spiral, what would he have said? Respect? To have his ideas seriously considered? To teach a young guy how to make it in a very tough business? Was this downward conflict spiral dance helping him achieve any of these? No. Why would two people behave this way? Why would they think and do all the things that resulted in their getting the opposite of what they really wanted?2 It was sick. We were destroying our company and our careers. That’s the last thing we wanted—or so we thought.

Colluding in Conflict What I said I wanted most and what Chuck said he wanted most turned out to be a lie. As much as we both liked respect and a voice, what we really wanted, in the middle of this deep-seated conflict spiral, was justification.

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The more I mistreated Chuck, the more he felt justified in mistreating me. And the more Chuck mistreated me, the more I felt justified in mistreating him. That’s Arbinger’s definition of the word collusion. Once that process gets started, a number of predictable conflict patterns start to emerge: • When we see others as objects in conflict, the behaviors we choose to try to win the argument or to change the other person tend to move from light (such as flattery and persuasion) to heavy (such as threats and force).3 • The issues at stake shift from small ones (“You never do the dishes!”) to big ones (“You don’t love me anymore!”). • Our goals devolve from winning an argument or changing others (we try to prove a point or get others to admit they’re wrong) to hurting or punishing those we are in conflict with (we demand that they be fired or that their lies be exposed), even if the action hurts us too. • Conflicts tend to proliferate when we see others as objects. They grow from a conflict between two people to encompass entire families, organizations, or even nations.4 All those consequences typically lead to more severe, destructive conflict. And we believe none of it is our fault. Self-deception also helps us understand how conflict can quickly escalate from a minor annoyance into an all-out war. Conflict escalation generally follows two models: the contender-defender model and the conflict spiral model.5 The contender-defender model appears when one person or party wants to change another person or party and begins employing conflict tactics to force that change. The model is typically asymmetrical in action and reaction.

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The person being asked to change typically tries to avoid the issue or takes a defensive posture in an attempt to fend off the change.6 In short, one party is the aggressor and the other party is the defender (figure 11). The conflict spiral model appears when both parties engage in conflict in a growing cycle of roughly symmetrical action and reaction. Each loop of the spiral gets a little bigger until what was once a small disagreement is now a four-alarm fire (figure 12).7 As you can imagine, most of us think we are stuck in a contender-defender model when we are in conflict: they are the aggressors and we are the innocent defenders. Or, if the situation is reversed, we are only intervening for their good—therefore, their defensiveness at our aggression is unwarranted. That’s why justifications such as blaming (for example, I blamed my children for ruining our beach day) or clinging to notions of being right (for example, I kept insisting we go to the beach even when no one wanted to) are such potent drugs in conflict. The more innocent we think we are and the guiltier we think the other side is, the more we feel justified.

Figure 11. Contender-defender model. Figure 11

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Figure 12. Conflict spiral model.

The contender-defender model is the proper explanation for what’s going on in some cases of conflict. However, the Figure 12 vast majority of times we engage in conflict, we are in a conflict spiral. We never recognize that we are escalating the conflict. Instead, through the lens of self-deception, we only see that the other side is escalating. Every action we take in the conflict appears a defensive move or perhaps a deterrent to stop the other side. Of course, those on the other side feel the same about every behavior they take. When both sides feel they are stuck in a contenderdefender model, it’s a pretty good sign they are actually in a conflict spiral. And once they are in a conflict spiral, what they say they want and what they actually want become two very different things. Conflict spirals, Arbinger argues, are more than just behavioral actions and reactions. Every time we see someone as an It, we’ve engaged in a mental action that leads to another action—behavior. That mental action (seeing someone as an It) requires that we obtain justification to make the dissonance within go away. It colors everything that we see or do in regard to the person and almost always exacerbates the problem.8 How we see another controls the sorts of ways we’ll react to stimuli.

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See someone as a Thou, and we’ll react to a stimulus one way. See someone as an It, and we’ll react to the exact same stimulus in a very different way. One way, we’re likely to assume positive intent by the other person. The other way, we’re likely to assume negative intent. It makes all the difference. Seeing a problem the smog way leads us down the path to collusion. Collusion happens when two people or two parties start seeing each other as Its. While on the outside they appear to be locked in an intractable gridlock of conflict, that’s not entirely true. As it turns out, Chuck and I were cooperating with each other. We were colluding. It was as if I were saying “Hey, Chuck, keep sabotaging my meetings and ideas so that you can give me plenty of justification for thinking you are a monster.” And then Chuck would say “Hey, Chad, I’d be happy to. However, I need you to keep ridiculing me in the meetings, talking about me behind my back, and leaving me out of important discussions in return. I need justification to see you as a punk, and those things you keep doing and saying are really doing the trick.” Now, we never said these things to each other, never thought them consciously. But that’s what we do in collusion—we work together to make them happen (figure 13). If just one of us were to pull out of the collusion, if just one of us were to change the way we saw the other and change the way we started treating our fellow colluder, the collusion would die. Why? Because my justification would begin to disappear. If I began seeing Chuck as a person, I would likely treat him differently (and even if I chose the same behavior, my behavior would feel different to Chuck). Once I saw him differently and treated him differently, I

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What I Do Blame

What I See An Object

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What Chuck Sees An Object

What Chuck Does Blame

Figure 13. Collusion. Adapted from the Arbinger Institute, The Anatomy of Peace, Figure 13 2nd ed. (Oakland: Berrett-Koehler, 2015), 49.

would deprive him of the one thing he needs most to keep the collusion alive—his justification. Unfortunately, that’s not what I did, and it’s not what most of us do. We wait for the other to take the first step. That’s easy love. Dangerous love forces us to face the fact that we are part of the pattern of conflict. It’s hard to see that we are helping feed the collusion and are keeping it alive. It’s hard to have the courage to change. And unfortunately, even when the person we are in conflict with does try to change, we don’t make it easy. Several hours after the meeting where Chuck walked out, he came to me and offered an olive branch. He said he was sorry for always resisting my ideas and wanted to work more closely with me in the future. I could have forgiven him. He was giving me everything I said I wanted. Instead, I responded like this: “It’s too little, too late. It’s going to take more than an apology to fix this.

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It’s going to take a long time for me to be able to trust you again.” Chuck walked away, head bowed. By the next morning, the conflict was raging again. Once I was stuck in collusion, Chuck’s attempt to change threatened my justification. It was hard to see him as a monster when he was apologizing. My justifications were dying. But I needed them to live to be as blameless as I was pretending to be. Of course, I could have changed the way I saw Chuck. However, my desire for justification was so strong that it was easier to reject his attempts to heal the breach and instead invite him back into a more comfortable space—our mutual dislike for each other. Yes, we were stuck in a conflict that would likely cost us our jobs. Yes, we were letting down our bosses and coworkers and everyone that counted on us to deliver the project. Yes, we were giving our customers an inferior product that would likely invite them to shop somewhere else. All of that felt worth the justification we were getting.9 Now, we just needed everyone to know it.

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CHAPTER 12

WHAT WAR IS GOOD FOR I always tell people, anger is like liquid. It’s fluid, it’s like water. You put it in a container and it takes the shape of that container. — LE YMAH GBOWE E

Collusion loves company. Its ability to multiply itself is truly extraordinary. Chuck and I may have been in collusion with each other, but over time, the conflict spread throughout the office. The split was pretty predictable. The older staff, especially the ones who had been at the company for a while, sided with Chuck. The younger staff sided with me. This didn’t just happen naturally however. Chuck and I strongly invited people to take sides. I told my “friends” negative stories about Chuck. I blamed. I played the victim. I spent hours constructing detailed emails marshaling all the evidence I could find that I was right. If I ever ran across something that contradicted my point of view, I would leave it out. Chuck was doing the same.

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Within a few months, many in the office were polarized. Employees who had worked together productively for years were no longer collaborating. We were at a standoff. And it was killing our project. Conflict spirals tend to do this: a conflict that begins among a few eventually—if the spiral is left to escalate— becomes a war among many. And once again, self-deception and justification lie at the heart of this dynamic. The Arbinger Institute refers to this phenomenon in collusion as “gathering allies.”1

The Ultimate Justification Several years ago, a good friend of mine, Raul, called me late one night with crushing news. Raul’s wife had left him for another man—and not just him but their three young children as well. Raul was devastated. I was shocked. He painfully related to me the way that she had mistreated him and the children over and over again. He was wounded, then became angry, and ultimately wanted revenge. I was a trained mediator. I had been trained to not listen to the narrative of just one side of the conflict, to not take sides, to remain neutral, to challenge the assumptions that people brought into the conflict. I did none of that. I got angry. I attempted to comfort Raul by telling him I didn’t like his wife much and thought he would be better off without her. Whenever he called with the latest twist and turns of the separation, I sided with him. Every time he showed restraint, I told him he was a better man than I was. We talked almost every night for several months. Raul told me I was his best friend in the whole world. I wasn’t. In fact, in almost every way, I was hurting him.

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When we get into conflict, we need justification for seeing another person or a group of people as Its. While there are all sorts of potent justifications out there, few are more powerful than another person, especially one we respect, validating that we are right. Allies help fuel collusion by giving us the exact justification we need to keep them going. Add them to my collusion cycle and they look like figure 14. My Allies

What I Do Blame

What I See An Object

His Allies What Chuck Sees An Object

What Chuck Does Blame

Figure 14. Collusion with allies. Adapted from the ArbingerFigure Institute, 14 The Anatomy of Peace, 2nd ed. (Oakland: Berrett-Koehler, 2015), 53.

What’s interesting about the whole collusion endeavor is that we subconsciously tilt the odds of gaining allies in our favor with our conflict stories.2 We tend to emphasize the parts of the story that show we are justified (for example, others’ abusive words, their unjust behavior, their mistakes, or the times when they aren’t seeing us as people). We almost always omit the parts of the story that expose us as being less justified than we want to be (for example, Raul conveniently left out any of the things he had done in the marriage to make matters worse and likely exaggerated how much of

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a monster his wife was). We carefully, albeit subconsciously, craft our conflict stories in a way that produces the desired result—the listener looks at us with great compassion and says, “You did the right thing!” Assume for a second that I had responded to Raul differently. Assume I had told him, “Are you sure you’re seeing this situation clearly? Spouses typically don’t leave without any reason. In what ways might you be making life challenging for her? Are you sure she’s as bad as you claim she is? I quite liked her every time we were together and so did you—for years!” What would Raul have done? If he’s anything like me, he would’ve pushed back, questioned my loyalty and friendship, and gone off to find someone else with a more sympathetic ear. Along the way, his story would get edited to make sure that whatever parts did not trigger me to say “You did the right thing!” were left out of the narrative in future retellings. If we are going to go to war, it’s always better to have on our side family, friends, coworkers, and countrymen who have our back. Of course, the people we are in conflict with also gather allies, which is why conflicts tend to migrate from few to many. Even large international conflicts often start with a feud between two people or two smaller groups and grow until they engulf entire civilizations. If we are the allies to a conflict instead of the people who originally began the collusion process, we can be doubly blind. For example, six months after Raul began relaying his marital problems to me, he called me excitedly one afternoon with “good news.” “We’re getting back together!” he said gleefully. He went on to tell me that they had met several times over coffee. They had talked through their problems, had apologized, and had decided to start living together again.

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“I’m so happy,” he said. “And our kids, you should’ve seen them. They were crying tears of joy.” You know who wasn’t so happy? Who wasn’t crying tears of joy? Me. I had spent the last few months trashing his wife, telling him he was totally justified in hating her, encouraging him to fight her for full custody of the kids, telling him he and his family were better off without her. He had changed his heart. The blinders were off. He was seeing her as a person again. He was choosing to love dangerously. Unfortunately, no such shift happened for me. “Are you sure?” I asked him in my most cautious tone. “You can’t trust her. She’s probably taking advantage of you. She wants the house and needs to figure out a way to get you out. She’ll move back in, be nice to you for a few weeks, and then push you out. I’m begging you, don’t do it!” Raul was stunned. He spent the next few hours trying to convince me that she wasn’t as bad as I was making her out to be. He told me that he had been too harsh on her for the past few months, that he had contributed a lot to the conflict too. I wasn’t buying any of it. When he called me a few weeks later to tell me that they were going to come visit me for the weekend, I told him not to bother. I couldn’t stand to be in the same room with her. He responded with silence and then a weak “Goodbye.” Raul quit calling. A few months later I found out that Raul and his wife had split again. Eventually they divorced. I was right! And no matter how awful that reality was for Raul and his family, I felt the sweet satisfaction of justification. Unfortunately, it didn’t last long. I can’t speak to all the reasons the divorce happened. But one thing I know for sure, in retrospect, is that I hurt their chances, in numerous ways, of ever reconciling.3

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One of the reasons collusion is so perilous is that it becomes self-sustaining over time. Once we get allies to see our enemies as Its, convincing them to see those same enemies as Thous after we change becomes very difficult. We help start conflict spirals in others that can be as strong or even stronger than the original ones we initiated. That’s the reason why so many of our high-level conflict negotiations—the ones between heads of states— often tend to fail to produce lasting peace. Even if the diplomats can get the leaders of conflicts to see each other as people, those leaders have difficulty going back to their constituents, the ones they have recruited as allies in the struggle, and telling them, essentially, “Never mind, we’re all good now!” Dennis Ross, the chief Middle East peace negotiator during the Clinton era, wrote that one of the major lessons he learned from the failed Oslo peace accords was that negotiations cannot succeed “if there is one environment at the negotiating table and another one on the street.”4 Ross and his team spent hundreds of hours working with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat. Much of that work was trying to help them see each other, and their respective constituents, as people. The hope was that once Netanyahu and Arafat changed the way they saw each other, they would begin collaborating on an agreement that would benefit everyone. Netanyahu and Arafat saw each other as Thous long enough to draft an agreement. But when Netanyahu and Arafat went back to their respective citizens to sell a peace deal, they were met with harsh resistance. The people on the ground didn’t start the war, but they had been swept up in it as allies and hated each other as much or more than their leaders did.

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Netanyahu could not persuade his fellow Israelis to change the way they saw Palestinians, and Arafat could not convince his fellow Palestinians to change the way they saw Israelis. Their allies to the conflict had hijacked the peace process for themselves. Eventually, Netanyahu and Arafat moved back to seeing each other as Its too. After the agreement ultimately failed to take hold, Ross wrote in his memoir, People-to-people programs that break down barriers between publics need to be promoted. . . . We focused far too much on the leaders and negotiators and far too little on the publics on each side. To be sure, peace cannot be negotiated from the bottom up in these societies. But peace will not come only from the top down, either.5

Once conflict turns to collusion, it becomes much harder to control and even harder to transform. Our justifications end up controlling us—enslaving us to the conflict.

E x e rci s e

Collusion Collusion convinces us that all conflict is smog. It obfuscates our role in conflict in a way that allows us to blame others for a conflict we are actively participating in. An exercise that the Arbinger Institute developed around collusion can be used to both help us see our role and suggest a way out (figure 15).

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What I Do

What You See

3

4

2

1 What You Do

What I See

Figure 15. My collusion figure. Figure 15

Step 1. Think of something the person or people you are in conflict with do that bothers you. Write it in box 1. Step 2. Think about the ways you see them when they are doing the thing that bothers you. In what ways are you seeing them as objects or in an I-It way? Write them down in box 2. Step 3. Think about both the behaviors and the conflict styles you are using after you begin seeing them as Its. Write them down in box 3. Step 4. Ideally, find someone who doesn’t know anything about the conflict. Read to that person what you wrote in box 3 only (reading what is in boxes 1 and 2 will give the person too much justification). Ask the person how he or she would see you if you did the things you describe in box 3. Write what the person tells you in box 4. Note: If you don’t feel comfortable sharing with another person, you can try your best to put yourself in someone else’s shoes to fill in box 4. Step 5. Ask yourself, “Are the things I am thinking and doing inviting more or less of the behavior I say I hate?

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Am I getting what I say I want out of the conflict? Or am I just getting more justification? What are the costs of this collusion? Is the justification really worth it?” If the answer to the last question is no, then why are you still in this collusion? A schizophrenic divide exists between what we say we want and what we actually want. This is the sickness of self-deception. It is the danger of collusion. It is quicksand. Everything we think or do from inside collusion tends to only tighten the grasp of collusion. When stuck in the sinkhole of collusion, we feel as if there’s no way we can change our circumstances. “It’s the quicksand that’s making me sink,” we tell ourselves. “The story has already been written,” we reassure our head and heart. “We are just playing out our part.” When we’re trapped in collusion, all conflict is smog. We can’t do anything about it except breathe it in and let it slowly kill us. If you are in a conflict that feels like that—a dead end, with nowhere to run or hide—I empathize. I have been there many times, and in a few conflicts in my life, I am still there. But I’ve also watched those trapped in collusion escape it—no, transcend it. Enter the cocoon willingly. Be freed from the shackles of fear. Love dangerously. If we choose when we move from seeing someone as a person to seeing someone as an object, then it is equally true that we can choose to move from seeing another as an object back to seeing another as a person.

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CHAPTER 13

WAITING FOR THEM TO TURN You can’t get to courage without walking through vulnerability. — BRE N É BR OWN

I had the world’s worst math teacher in high school. He was strict to a fault, impatient, and punishing. He would call us to the front of the class using our last names—“Ford, get up here!”—and then demand that we solve equations that we hadn’t learned yet. As we stood at the chalkboard struggling to solve the math problem of the day, he would mock us. Then, after we were completely humiliated, he would walk to the board, quickly solve the equation, and then ask us if we were really ready for eleventh grade. I hated him. I wanted revenge. I found out his birthday was coming in a week and I had an idea. Our math teacher wasn’t exactly a lady’s man. He was single and out of shape, sported an unsightly combover, and dressed like he had raided his wardrobe from the Saturday Night Fever set. His most salient feature was the hideous ties he’d wear with his polyester suits each day.

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The plan? I would go to a thrift store and acquire the fattest, ugliest, most garish tie I could find. On his birthday,

I would wrap it in a box and then leave it on his desk just before class with a note that said “Open me!” My dream was that he’d open it with enthusiasm, see the hideous tie in the box, and then be humiliated the same way we were always embarrassed—in front of the whole class. On the day of his birthday, my plan began to unfold perfectly. He had left the classroom to use the restroom just before the period began. I carefully set the box on his desk and then sat in my chair filled with anticipation. He walked in and immediately noticed the box on his desk. He asked the class who had put the box there. We all shook our heads like we didn’t know. He picked up the box and examined it. He read the note that said simply “Open me.” He was curious and asked the class if he should open it. We all nodded eagerly. He opened the box, reached in, and pulled out the enormous clown tie. Just as we were ready to burst into laughter, something unexpected happened. Our teacher began to choke up. He ran the tie between his fingers, struggling to hold back his tears. There was an uncomfortable silence in the class. We had no idea this monster had tear ducts. Finally, he held the tie up before the class and said, “I don’t know who gave me this birthday gift,” he said, his voice cracking. “But I just want you to know that I’ve been teaching for nearly thirty years, and in all that time, no student has ever given me a birthday gift before. This means so much to me. Thank you so much. I love it!” Then, overcome with emotion, he ran out of the room.

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We all sat there, stunned. He loved the tie. The joke had backfired. He didn’t know he was part of an elaborate prank. He actually thought we had intended to give him a gift! I felt about one foot tall. Several minutes later he came back into the classroom and reiterated how much the gift meant to him and how grateful he was to us. I didn’t have words. A funny thing happened over the next few months. He began calling us by our first names. He began teaching us the math before asking us to do it on the board. We started learning. He actually became a really good teacher. On the last day of class he told us all, “You all are the best class I’ve ever taught. Thank you so much for a wonderful year. I love you all.”

Both Turned Away

He Turns First

He Invites Me to Turn

Figure 16. Easy love. Figure 16

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Strangely, we loved him too. Talk about conflict transformation. But here’s the thing. I didn’t do anything to transform the conflict. I was no Mahatma Gandhi. I just had dumb luck. In fact, I was trying to escalate the collusion. I wanted to humiliate the teacher. He was just so clueless he thought an insincere gesture was meant to heal the breach. Just the idea that someone cared about him was enough to change the way he saw us and himself. His humanity burst through my self-deception, inviting me to turn (figure 16).

Easy Love Isn’t the Way The sort of love that I started feeling for my teacher wasn’t dangerous love. It was easy love. It was a gift. I didn’t have to let go of anything to receive it. This situation has happened to all of us. Through no real effort of our own, sometimes we are overpowered by the humanity of others. It hits us like a tsunami. For example, we find out that a former friend has cancer and the grudge that we are holding melts away. We get a small peek into the enormous challenges of another’s life and suddenly all the judgment dissipates. Or maybe we’re on the internet and we see people in places like Haiti who are suffering and we think to ourselves, “I want to click that link and donate.” Even the blindest of us can be healed by the humanity of others. We don’t have to do anything at all, except wait for people to get sick, to have his or her life fall apart, or for an earthquake or a tornado to hit. People’s humanity can overcome even the deepest forms of justification and self-deception. But easy love has an obvious downside. Conflict is still out of my control. Easy love is still weak and self-absorbed.

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Even smog-filled cities have days of sunshine when the air is clear. Easy love reinforces the idea that I cannot change until the conditions around me change. That idea feeds into the hopelessness that already besets us in conflict. Waiting for some outside force to act upon us isn’t dangerous love. Yes, it offers a way out of conflict, but that way requires something horrible to happen to someone else. What happens if an estranged friend never gets sick? Or, as in the case of an old high school friend whom I had a falling out with, he gets cancer and I don’t learn about it until after he dies? What happens if I don’t follow the news? Or I’m so disconnected from others that their humanity can’t reach me? The easy way is what we all hope for, I think. It’s similar to the story people tell me when they come into my office. We want help without effort. We want someone or something else to make peace. So, we wait. And we complain. And the peace never comes. Had my math teacher actually understood the cruel intentions behind my gift, do you think the situation in the class would’ve gotten better on its own? My estranged friend died without ever hearing me say I’m sorry. He died without my knowing whether he forgave me. I still have so much I want to say to him. But saying those things now, after he is gone, doesn’t completely heal the breach. The easy way leaves us at the whim of fate. It decouples our ability to choose from the conflicts and relationships we struggle with.

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Other Tried-and-Untrue Methods of Change Several other easy love approaches are worth mentioning. All of them are popular. They are • Forcing. Using threats of punishment or even violence. • Coping. Deciding to be a martyr and suffer in silence. • Leaving. Changing roommates or jobs or communities. • More communication. Taking a communication class on how to talk to your partner. Unfortunately, they rarely work if I’m stuck in the smog mindset and still seeing the other person as an It. The Arbinger Institute refers to these approaches as “dead ends” in Leadership and Self-Deception.1 None of them, when we still see people as Its, have the power to transform conflict. Ultimately, what all four of these methods have in common is the “I will fix this by trying to change them” approach. That’s not dangerous love. When changing others is really about making my life better, not theirs, that’s selfish love.

Forcin g Forcing change, or put more politely, “correcting,” is the go-to move for many. If we are seeing others as Its, we’ve likely concluded that they are the problem and therefore they have to change. If they aren’t willing, on their own, to change, then we’ll “help” them along. Competitors love forcing as an option. Threats, ultimatums, punishment, shunning, shaming, the cold-shoulder, sanctions, boycotts, strikes, war—all of these are tools to try to end conflict. And in virtually all such circumstances—how did it go? Did others change? For most the answer is no. In cases where the answer is yes, was the change sustainable? Or did you have to keep applying pressure or force to

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make the change stick? If the change was forced, I’d submit that the change you saw wasn’t a change at all. When we are forced to change, the change typically is only superficial. The minute someone quits applying force, we revert back to the way we were before.

Copin g Coping is when we tell ourselves, “I will just ignore the problem, and suffer silently. As long as there is no overt conflict, all is well.” We hope that eventually the person or people we are in conflict with will see us suffering, have pity on us, and change. Accommodators often embrace this approach. But are others really going to change if they see us as Its? They’ll likely think that we deserve our suffering or that any harm they are causing is justified. The more we suffer, the more justification they need to create to reduce the dissonance. Coping with others is popular advice from the “suck it up” crowd: “keep your eyes closed and your mouth shut and everything will be fine.” But coping can feed some powerful justifications.2 For example, now, not only are the people I’m in conflict with bad people, but they’re bad people who have no empathy, whom I must suffer for, who are going to make the situation better.

Le avin g Another strategy that we employ is leaving. People break up, divorce, move, or change jobs. In the larger sociopolitical context, they’ll build walls and segregate (sometimes willfully) just to get away. Avoiders often employ this strategy. Why doesn’t leaving work? It begins with the premise that other people are the problem and that the solution is to somehow exclude them from our lives. We change them

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by controlling how they interact with us on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes leaving is the right answer. For example, no one should stay in an abusive relationship. Boundaries are an important part of any relationship, and sometimes they need to be strictly enforced. Going outside and taking a walk and a few deep breaths before having a difficult conversation can be a good idea as well. Nevertheless, the very act of leaving supposes that leaving changes the way we see others and the way they see us. Leaving can be helpful if we’ve transformed the way we see others beforehand. But in the midst of a collusion, it often reinforces our negative beliefs.

M ore Com m un icat ion If coping seems unbearable and leaving appears impossible, another common, seemingly more enlightened approach often is advocated—more communication. For years, conflict resolution and counseling professionals have argued that dialogue can be effective in dissolving stereotypes and prejudice, creating empathy between people and groups.3 The idea makes sense. The more people talk, the theory goes, the more they see each other as people.4 Perceptions change, which leads to understanding, then acceptance, and ultimately empathy.5 Communication, on its surface, may appear to be collaboration. But it really depends on how we’re seeing the people we’re communicating with. No one is against communication or empathy. However, the kind of communication is what really matters here. We can communicate in two ways, and how I see you will often

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determine how my communication is received and what you’ll communicate in return. If I’m communicating to you that you are a problem— that I’m the victim or I’m right and you’re wrong—then the communication has the potential to make matters worse, not better. You’ll be defensive and communicate blame back to me, and the communication becomes nothing more than fuel for the fire of collusion. Using communication as a way of understanding others so that we can change how we see them is much more effective. But we rarely get to transformation by starting at communication. We need to start deeper. Arbinger Founder Terry Warner writes, We do not make progress in our way of being by working hard to make events go our way, or by using all our wit and skill to outmaneuver or overpower others to make them bend to our will. We get nowhere by forcing onto them our plan for making ourselves happy. Good things do start to happen as soon as we open ourselves to the light or truth that flows to us from others.6

We have to change the direction of the flow, not wait for others. Conflict reconciliation expert John Paul Lederach once asked: Which way will the water flow that defines our relationship, toward the shore of fear or that of love? When the water flows toward fear, the relationship is defined by recrimination and blame, self-justification and protection, violence and the desire for victory over other. When the water flows toward love, it is defined by openness and accountability, self-reflection and vulnerability, mutual respect, dignity and the proactive engagement of the other.7

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Dangerous love gets the water flowing in the only direction that will actually give us lasting solutions to the problems that beset us.

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CHAPTER 14

TURNING FIRST On my left is a blazing fire, and On my right, a cool flowing stream. The voice of the fire says: “I am not fire, I am fountainhead, Come into me and don’t mind the sparks." — RUMI

Faced with the choice between a cool flowing stream and a blazing fire, we often choose the stream, thinking it will lead to peace. Easy love is the flowing stream. Dangerous love is the blazing fire. Typically, when potential clients call looking for mediation help, they want to know the shortest (and cheapest) route. They are often frustrated when I tell them that conflict transformation takes time and effort—on their part and mine. Quick fixes are rare. Potential clients typically call three to five times before they are ready to commit to a sustainable process. What I find interesting is that the things at stake seem to be worth the time, the effort, and even the money. Families, marriages, neighbors, and in some circumstances the physical

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safety of entire groups of people are at risk. People are miserable. I often hear them say, “I can’t live this way anymore.” However, when we are engaged in conflict, fear often makes the perceived cost of engaging in conflict appear too high. And our misperception of people tends to lessen the value of preserving the relationship in our eyes. Just at the moment when we need to invest more time and effort in the relationship, we too often start investing the least. The smog view of conflict gives it an air of inevitability that convinces us that putting in effort won’t lead to a reward. From our inward mindset, we perceive that the only way out of conflict is the one that benefits us. And from a smog point of view, no amount of effort will bring much relief. The easy way is attractive because, well, it’s easy. It takes virtually nothing from us to achieve. The less people mean to us, in the throes of seeing them as objects, the less effort we want to extend. Unfortunately, like most shortcuts, the easy way comes with its own set of problems. It’s conflict management, not conflict transformation. It doesn’t last because we didn’t earn it. Turning first, on the other hand, is hard. It takes courage, sacrifice, vulnerability, and patience. But if we can let go of our fear of conflict and the people we are in conflict with and be willing to turn first, it can change everything.

The Open and Closed Ways A group of employees had just received the results of a devastating customer service survey. The president of the company was irritated and “ordered” them into a one-day conflict resolution workshop with me.

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The session was going to be rough. The president’s desire to force employees to change had actually backfired. They clearly felt the results of the survey were unfair. The employees weren’t the problem. Their customers were! They were very defensive. One employee threatened to quit if he was going to be forced to spend the day with me. I didn’t blame any of them. No one wants to sit in a workshop for eight hours and be told, “You have a problem.” A workshop like that would never work. Remember, self-deception isn’t just having a problem and not knowing you have a problem. It’s also resisting any suggestion that you have a problem. A different approach was needed. The employees didn’t need to be forced to change. They needed to feel inspired to turn first. I walked into the workshop with a copy of all the surveys. Without saying a word, I walked into the middle of the room and dropped them on the floor. “I’ve read every single one of these. They’re awful—the worst customer satisfaction surveys I’ve ever seen.” People in the room were not happy. No one was making eye contact with me. “How many of you think these surveys are fair, that they accurately measure the quality of the work that you do?” No one raised a hand. “In fact, how many of you think that the people who actually need to be in the room today are the people who filled out these surveys?” All of them raised their hands. “Look, I know you don’t want to be here today. And frankly, I don’t really want to be here either. There’s nothing worse for a facilitator than facilitating a workshop for

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a group of people who don’t want to hear what you have to say. “I’m going to propose something different. What if we spent the day learning how to help those customers change? Would that interest you?” People nodded their heads yes. Then the skepticism began: “You clearly don’t know our customers. They are entitled, self-centered brats. It’s not like we haven’t thought of that before.” “Okay, I hear you. They do seem very unhappy. But could we try?” I replied. I took them through the exercise that is included at the end of this chapter. It turns out we know more about what motivates people to change than we think. I asked them to make two lists side by side. On the top of the first list, they wrote “Open.” On the top of the second list, they wrote “Closed.” I then asked them to think about times that other people tried to change them and to write in the first column what sorts of things others did that the employees were open to, what worked, and what inspired them to change? Next, I asked them to write in the second column what sorts of things they were closed to, what didn’t work, and what actually made them behave even worse. Typically, when people are done, their charts look something like table 2. (However, in a group of twenty people, I can get twenty different results.)

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Table 2. Open versus closed approaches Open

Closed

Show me, don’t tell me Help me see what I’m doing right Lead by example Have patience Separate the person from the problem

Blame me Make threats Be passive-aggressive Be hypocritical Judge me Be condescending

What happens next is always interesting to me. I asked the employees, “If you could use one word or phrase to sum up what’s going wrong with the approaches on the closed side, what would it be?” They started shouting out answers like “They don’t care!” “They have selfish motives!” “They don’t see the good in me!” “Would it be fair to say that they see you as objects? That your needs and concerns, your fears and goals aren’t being taking seriously?” They all nodded their heads. An I-It relationship was provoking the resistance. “If you could use one word or phrase to sum up what’s going right with the approaches on the open side, what would it be?” Since they had already identified what was going wrong on the closed side, it was easy for them to see what was going right on the open side. “They care about us.” “They want me to change because it will benefit me.” “They are willing to change with me.” “They see me as a person.” Seeing someone as a person actually invites that person to change.

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Then I asked a critical question: “We know what works for us, what inspires us to change. And we know what doesn’t work for us, what causes us to be closed to change. The question for you is, which side are you on with your customers? Are you on the open side or the closed side?” Again, no one made eye contact with me. They were on the closed side. They were seeing their customers in the exact same way that would provoke resistance in themselves. And then they were blaming their customers for being closed-minded. “Who here needs to change?” Slowly, everyone in the room raised his or her hand. That was the beginning of the end of war. It took about forty minutes. Seven hours later they left with some simple homework: “Try to see every customer you encounter tomorrow as a person.” They decided to be the first to turn. 1. They let go of their fear of conflict. 2. They let go of the fear of the customers they were in conflict with. 3. They turned first. Something amazing happened next. Turning first invited the customers to turn too. Suddenly, the customers weren’t the monsters the employees once thought they were. They started spending more time helping things go right and less time putting out fires. Their customer satisfaction scores went up almost immediately. The turnaround didn’t happen overnight. Dangerous love takes work. It isn’t easy. It requires effort from us. It requires us to let go of our justifications and embrace the humanity of those who hurt us. It requires getting over ourselves so that we can be fully open to others.

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Which Side Are You On? Now it’s your turn. Make two lists side by side. On the top of the first list, write “Open.” On the top of the second list, write “Closed,” as shown in table 3. Table 3. Open versus closed exercise Open

Closed

Now, think about times that other people tried to change you. What sorts of things did they do that you were open to? What worked? What inspired you to change? Write those down in the first column. Next, think about what sorts of things you were closed to. What didn’t work? What actually made you behave even worse? Write those down in the second column. Now you know what works for you, what inspires you to change. And you know what doesn’t work for you, what causes you to be closed to change. The critical question for you is, “Which side are you on with the person or people you are in conflict with?” Are you trying to influence others from the closed side or the open side?

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If it’s the closed side, what are you willing to do to move to the open side? How might this move change the dynamics of your conflict? What are you willing to do to be the first to turn? Dangerous love is the hard way. The fire, as it turns out, is the fountainhead. The sparks light the path to peace.

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CHAPTER 15

THE KUMBAYA FALLACY Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world. All things break. And all things can be mended. Not with time, as they say, but with intention. So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally. The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you. — L.R. KN OST

“How are you going to make world peace? Sit around singing ‘Kumbaya’?” That’s a popular comeback from skeptics when they hear I do peacebuilding for a living. For those of you unfamiliar with the reference, “Kumbaya” was a popular campfire song in the sixties. Imagine people with long hair, flowers in their headbands, sitting around a campfire holding hands, as someone gently strums the guitar singing: Kumbaya, my Lord, Kumbaya. Kumbaya, my Lord, Kumbaya.

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Kumbaya, my Lord, Kumbaya. Oh, Lord, Kumbaya Someone’s crying, Lord, Kumbaya! Someone’s crying, Lord, Kumbaya! Someone’s crying, Lord, Kumbaya! Oh, Lord, Kumbaya.1

People nowadays mock the belief that if everyone in the world held hands and sang “Kumbaya,” all our problems would go away. I think this pervasive kumbaya image of peacebuilding in Western culture creates deep skepticism about real change. Too often peacebuilding appears to favor a soft approach to conflict that feels all warm and fuzzy but completely out of touch with the tough, gritty, messy reality of most conflict. Most realists tend to side with Aristotle: “We make war to live in peace.” Force needs to be met with force, strength met with even greater strength, terror met with shock and awe. Many people counseled me to not call the book Dangerous Love because dangerous love can be misinterpreted as weak, passive, and ill-equipped to deal with the structural realties we all face. When some people hear that “seeing people as people” or “dangerous love” is an antidote for much of what ails the world they think, “Oh, so what you are saying is that if I love someone, all my problems will be solved? Well, you don’t know my husband” (or “You don’t know my boss” or “You don’t know the North Koreans”). “You want me to love the person who’s standing in the way of everything I need? You want me to turn first? You’re right—that is dangerous. It’s also stupid. It doesn’t work that way.” Three misconceptions are going on here: 1. Dangerous love is naive. 2. Dangerous love is passive.

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3. Dangerous love can’t change the system. Dangerous love is none of these. It’s the opposite: dangerous love is strong, it requires action, it can transform entire systems of conflict.

Dangerous Love Is Strong Dangerous love is geared toward implementing what motivates people to change. It isn’t restrained by the fear of appearing weak. If we worry about appearing weak, we once again are stuck in an inward mindset that is really about us, not others. Fear of appearing weak also shows a fundamental misunderstanding about dangerous love. The love in dangerous love doesn’t imply a particular behavior. As The Anatomy of Peace teaches, we can do almost any behavior in two ways—even hard behaviors like disciplining or firing or going to war can be done while practicing dangerous love. And soft behaviors like complimenting or letting people get away with something they shouldn’t be doing can be done without any love at all.2 Loving others dangerously frees us up to treat them in exactly the way we should treat them—as people. Sometimes people need to be corrected, even fired. But we’ll never really know that until we see them as people. The belief that dangerous love works with only certain individuals or groups—“good” people or “our” people, for example—misses the point completely. It’s meant to work with all people. As it turns out, people are never as good as we make them out to be and never as bad as our justifications want them to be. In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., We must recognize that the evil deed of the enemyneighbor, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that

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he is. An element of goodness may be found even in our worst enemy. . . . . . . There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.3

When we fear conflict and can’t avoid it, we often believe that the solution to someone’s resistance is more resistance. In effect, we try to fight fire with fire. The belief that resisting the humanity of others shows strength and therefore makes peace is a mistaken one. While showing strength and even using force can, at times, be effective conflict management tools, the more I resist others’ humanity, the more they are likely to resist me. In reality, water is a more effective tool to put out fires. Our discussion on collusion in chapter 11 walks us through the inevitable outcome of using war to make peace. Once I see someone as a person, it should dramatically affect how I treat him or her. Not only does my mindset change, but my ability to love grows and expands in ways I never thought possible. When that happens, I will instinctively start to meet fire with water. Several years ago, I was sitting on a rooftop in Jerusalem with a small group of Palestinian men. We often liked to go up there to talk and see the stars. We had just finished several days of a workshop together, and in the aftermath, a poignant conversation arose about dangerous love. They were moved by the idea of seeing people as people. It resonated deeply with them. For many of them, that workshop helped them see Israelis as people for the first time in their lives. But what to do next? That was the hard part. One of the people on the rooftop was a young man named Amir. He was well-educated, deeply connected to his Palestinian

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roots, and felt a moral obligation to resist what he believed was Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands. “I appreciate this idea that we see the humanity of each other,” Amir began. “I kept thinking as I went through the workshop that we would be in a very different place today in Palestine had we done that from the beginning. We are suffering because of our failure to see each other as people, and we are passing this disease on to our children. “But what is done is done,” Amir continued. “The Israelis have taken our land. I understand now why they did it, but it doesn’t make it right. I owe it to my children and my grandchildren to return this land to them. “Our olive trees were planted hundreds of years ago by my ancestors,” he said with tears welling up in his eyes. “I have a responsibility to make sure they are cared for by my family. I must do everything in my power to make sure that our inheritance is not lost.” Amir felt he owed it to his family to do everything he could to fight the growing takeover of his family’s home, their olive trees, and the land that their ancestors had lived on for hundreds of years. “If we see them as people,” Amir continued, “we will be waving the white flag. They will take advantage of us, and we will lose everything. I know the way we are fighting isn’t working. But it seems better to die fighting for what we believe in than to sit passively by and let them take our past, present, and future.” I felt for Amir. But I think—understandably, given the situation—he missed the deeper point. Resistance can be both a behavior and a way of seeing. We can do almost any behavior while seeing someone as a person or as an object—even resist that person’s behavior.

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We can choose hard behaviors that include everything from protests and civil disobedience to, in some circumstances, war while seeing the person we are resisting as a person. In fact, sometimes it’s imperative, for the person’s well-being and our own, that we do so. However, resisting people’s humanity is very different from resisting their behaviors or policies. The minute we’ve convinced ourselves that the problem isn’t the actions they’ve taken toward us but the fact that they are bad people, the moral foundation of our resistance evaporates. Amir can find a way to resist what he believes are unjust actions by the Israelis while still not resisting the humanity of Israelis. Again, the words of Dr. King illuminate the kumbaya fallacy: To our most bitter opponents we say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. . . . But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win our freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”4

To live in peace, we have to prepare for peace. We prepare for peace by insisting on seeing those we disagree with as people. When we see people as people, we create the space and ability to develop something John Paul Lederach calls our “moral imagination”—to come up with all sorts of

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possibilities and solutions to our problems that honor the humanity of others.5 That cultivation of our moral imagination is a direct result of our ability to project the I into the Thou, to see how we are connected, to see ourselves in a web of relationships with others, to seek solutions to problems that help all of us.

Dangerous Love Is Active The second kumbaya fallacy is the belief that dangerous love is passive. That it exists entirely as some sort of inward state, that as long as I feel the right way about a person, all is well. It’s not enough to say we see people as people. Our actions have to reflect that view for it to have any real power. Dangerous love helps us become alive to others’ humanity, and it calls us to action. Ignore this call and we deny their humanity all over again, and the same vicious cycle of self-deception and justification start anew—usually with renewed vigor.6 However, the more we act upon the call, the more we open ourselves to the humanity of others and to the solutions to the problems that we are intertwined in. An apology without change isn’t an apology. Accountability without correction isn’t accountability. Dangerous love without action isn’t really dangerous or love. Just because we now see someone as a person doesn’t mean that the conflict has gone away. Anyone who has been involved in contentious negotiations or mediations knows just how stubborn and entrenched people can get. Two people can see each other as people and still be in conflict with each other. Problem-solving or conflict resolution is still a big part of the process.

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Collaborative problem-solving is very difficult when people don’t trust each other and feel a constant, almost obsessive, need to protect their own justifications. To get to true, sustainable peace, we have to go beyond just managing conflict and even have to set aside problem-solving for a moment to get at the underlying relational issues—specifically, how I see others—to really transform conflict. Conflict transformation solutions require operating at a much deeper level than behavior. They require us to dive down deep to the way we see each other. They require faith that people can change, that we as individuals can change, that we have the power within us to commit to see and live differently. They require me to make the first move, the most dangerous move. However, that doesn’t mean that conflict resolution isn’t needed. We desperately need creative solutions to the problems that beset our relationships at home, at work, in our communities, and in the world. Dangerous love helps us become cocoon thinkers in conflict instead of smog ones. And cocoon thinkers are the ones who not only transform relationships but also change entire systems that undergird and fuel conflict.

Dangerous Love Can Change the World The third fallacy is that dangerous love can change personal relationships but can’t change the systemic conflicts that often underlie our personal conflicts. In the late 1960s, peace studies scholar Johan Galtung started to see conflict in a transformative way. His work suggests that how we see conflict (and the people involved in it) profoundly impacts not only our personal relationships but also the way communities, cultures, and governments handle the problems we face in the world today.

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Galtung introduced the idea of “structural violence.” He argued that behind every incident of “direct violence” (both physical and emotional), you will find certain social structures that support or justify the direct violence.7 The best thinking at the time looked to inherent flaws in humanity as the source of conflict. Galtung’s view took this idea a step further by looking at the way institutions construct our reality and give us permission or even encourage us to act in violent ways. In short, individuals alone aren’t to blame for violence, Galtung argued. Direct violence or conflict is symptomatic of something deeper. People have social systems (governments, cultures, religions, etc.) that give them legal or moral justifications to commit violence. If we attack direct violence at the source of the people committing the acts of violence but ignore the institutions that permit and even encourage seeing people as less important, it’s a bit like playing the game Whack-a-Mole. We can punish, imprison, or take out the people committing the violence, but more are coming and we’ll be in an endless loop of putting out fires. In the early 1990s, Galtung began writing about an even deeper form of violence that he referred to as “cultural violence.” Galtung defined cultural violence as anything in our culture—art, music, religion, symbols, science, and so on— that makes direct or structural violence feel right or that legitimizes the use of violence against other human beings through dehumanization.8 Galtung introduced a violence triangle (figure 17) that shows the symbiotic relationship among these three forms of violence. Galtung argued that to transform conflict, change agents had to attack not just direct violence or even the structural violence that undergirds it. They had to go deeper—to the

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culture that both justifies and supports the ongoing direct violence. Sustainable peace, he argued, depends on establishing peace at the cultural level—that is, at the level of how we see conflict and how we see others. As long as our culture gives us justification for seeing other human beings as deserving or worthy of violence, we will create social institutions that reinforce that belief and continue to have the problem of direct violence. In fact, the more direct violence that occurs, the more cultural justifications will have to be created to support the direct violence. It’s a never-ending loop. While violence might not describe this phenomenon at home or at work (though sadly sometimes, it does), the same ideas generally apply to how I see and treat my spouse, my children, my neighbors, employees, or managers. Until the basic cultural assumptions change, conflicts are unlikely to go away. Galtung argued that if you really want big, sustainable peace, you have to attack the problem at its root—at the level of how we see, at the level of culture. Attacking it at Direct Violence Visible

Invisible

Structural Violence

Cultural Violence

Figure 17. Galtung’s violence triangle. Adapted from Johan Galtung, "Cultural Violence," Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 3 (August 1990): 291-305

Figure 17

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the behavioral level alone—either directly or structurally— won’t get the job done. Yet that is exactly what we do in conflict at home, at work, in the community, and in the world. We either run away from or attack the symptoms instead of getting at the heart of conflict. Addressing conflict at the cultural or deepest levels promotes sustainable transformation in individuals, families, organizations, and communities. It leads, Galtung argues, from cultural peace to structural peace to, ultimately, direct peace. Brené Brown, in her book Dare to Lead, writes about this cultural change by talking about living into our values. She writes, A value is a way of being or believing that we hold most important. Living into our values means that we do more than profess our values, we practice them. We walk our talk—we are clear about what we believe and hold important, and we take care that our intentions, words, thoughts and behaviors align with those beliefs.9

Dangerous love turns out be anything but passive. A change in the way one sees others always leads to action. And that action includes dismantling the structures that invite us to see others as objects and intervening whenever direct violence is occurring. Creating peace at the cultural, structural, and direct levels is obviously easier said than done. It has proven difficult to figure out a replicable way to deal with issues at the cultural level that helps us concentrate on others’ humanity and engenders a sense of helpfulness, instead of hurtfulness, toward them. I believe it’s possible, especially if we’re

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willing to consider a different way of defining conflict—one that creates more hope in our collective future.

E x e rci s e

Dangerous Love Values Dangerous love requires intentionality. It takes practice. Reading a book like this and determining that we’re going to change the way we see others is a start. But most people find that they’ve established mental patterns of an inward mindset that are tough to break. They want to see people as people, but they have spent decades doing the opposite, and they won’t change overnight. Many people who have gone through the workshops I’ve facilitated leave thinking “I’m never going to see my spouse/ coworker/neighbor as an object again” only to find themselves reverting to an I-It orientation in a few hours or days. Dangerous love takes time and patience to develop. It starts with little steps that we can take each day. In Dare to Lead, Brené Brown talks about the power of identifying values and then finding ways to make those values actionable.10 We’ve identified three critical values in this book that need cultivating: 1. Seeing people as people. This means that I have an outward mindset toward others. I see their needs, wants, and desires as equally valid as my own. Others are not vehicles for me to use. Or obstacles for me to overcome. Nor are they irrelevant to me. 2. Turning first. This is inside-outside transformation. To solve the most difficult problems in my life, I first look inward and ask myself, “In what ways may I not be seeing these people correctly? What assumptions

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have I brought to this conflict? In what ways might I be self-deceived?” It is the opposite of the blaming and dehumanization that often plague our conflicts. 3. Collaborative problem-solving. This means that when faced with conflict with another, I am committed to finding solutions that meet the needs of both of us. I will not avoid the conflict or give in. I won’t try to win the conflict or compromise. I will engage the person with respect for both that person’s needs and mine. We need to do more than just hold these values. We have to put them into action every day. Here’s a modified exercise from Brown’s book11 that can be useful in turning our values into action: Value 1: Seeing People as People 1. What are three behaviors that support this value? 2. What are three behaviors that contradict this value? 3. Choose one behavior that you can apply to the person you are in conflict with. Value 2: I Turn First 1. What are three behaviors that support this value? 2. What are three behaviors that contradict this value? 3. Choose one behavior that you can apply to the person you are in conflict with. Value 3: Collaborative Problem-Solving 1. What are three behaviors that support this value? 2. What are three behaviors that contradict this value? 3. Choose one behavior that you can apply to the person you are in conflict with. Dangerous love takes work. Kumbaya isn’t going to get it done. The next few chapters tell stories of people who, in the midst of dangerous conflict, chose to turn first.

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CHAPTER 16

INVITING THEM TO TURN Mercy and Truth are met together; Justice and Peace have kissed each other. — PSALM 85:10

In the early days of South Africa’s powerful transition from an apartheid state to a democracy, Bishop Desmond Tutu had a vision that would forever change the history of South Africa. Nelson Mandela had just won the presidency, but his ability to rule was still in question. Blacks everywhere were demanding justice for years of human rights abuses. Whites—both Afrikaners and English—were defensive and contemplated everything from violent revolution to fleeing the country. Apartheid is an Afrikaans word that roughly translates to “apartness.” From 1948 until 1994, under apartheid, black and mixed-race South Africans, who made up the overwhelming majority of South African citizens, were denied basic political, economic, and social rights.

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After apartheid was dismantled, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), under the guidance of Tutu, invited victims of apartheid to come forward and tell their stories. The people who had harmed them or their families were offered amnesty if they would come forward, give a full confession, and state that their actions were politically motivated. Many thought the TRC would lead to more pain, more separation, and more anger. But Tutu believed showing dangerous love to his enemies, including F. W. de Klerk, the former president of South Africa, was the only sustainable path to reconciliation for the people of South Africa. “You see, we can’t go to heaven alone,” Tutu once said. “If I arrive there, God will ask me: ‘Where is De Klerk? His path crossed yours.’ And . . . God will ask him: ‘Where is Tutu?’”1 Tutu realized that any sort of reconciliation process couldn’t be one-sided. It couldn’t weigh justice more than mercy. It needed to unite, not divide. What was needed was something that redeemed everyone, victim and victimizer. Tutu then dug deep—back to a traditional African belief in something called ubuntu or botho. Ubuntu is very difficult to render into a Western language. It speaks of the very essence of being human. . . . You are generous, you are hospitable, you are friendly and caring and compassionate. You share what you have. It is to say, “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours.” We belong in a bundle of life. We say, “A person is a person through other persons.”2

At the core of ubuntu was this idea that each human being is a link in the larger chain of humanity. As we deny the humanity of others, those links become broken. The chain falls apart. We believe, falsely, that our link is the chain.

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Ubuntu’s central concern is “the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships, a seeking to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator.”3 Ubuntu is the reconnection of the links that bind us together as people. We cannot be truly, fully human until we are reconciled, ubuntu implores us. And being human— fully human—is the only path to reconciliation and sustainable peace. Tutu took that dream and the idea of ubuntu and created a TRC that would invite people to share their narratives—not the blaming, self-deceived ones but the truthful ones about who we really are. The TRC invited those who were wronged to forgive and let go of the anger that had scarred their hearts. It created a form of restorative justice that didn’t seek revenge but sought to redress the wrongs that created the breach. And it envisioned a new sort of relationship between blacks and whites in South Africa centered on the idea that we are all connected and that the victory South Africa must achieve is a victory for everyone—black and white, victim and perpetrator. In short, it insisted that the only path to peace was to see and embrace the humanity of one another. It was dangerous love at its very finest.

From Seeing to Doing to Reconnection “Am I seeing someone as a person if I don’t want anything to do with that person anymore?” is the most challenging question I get asked in my work. It comes up almost weekly. The idea behind the question, I think, is this: “I recognize she is a person. I recognize that I contributed to the conflict. I no longer hold anything against her. I wish her well. But do I have to be friends with her? Do I have to be in

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relationship with her again? I’m just not interested in that. Can’t we just go our separate ways?” Certainly, given everything we’ve discussed, the answer, on the surface, appears to be yes. I can be your roommate or neighbor or partner and see you as an object. And I can choose to not be your roommate, neighbor, or partner and see you as a person. In fact, in situations where abuse has occurred and could occur again, creating boundaries seems especially wise. But physical distance and emotional distance are two very different things. I can be deeply connected to people whom I rarely see or interact with and deeply disconnected from people who live under the same roof that I do. If it’s a question of physical distance (which, in my opinion, it rarely is) then yes, I believe it’s possible to still see people as people and be far away from them. I can move out and still see someone as a person. I can get a divorce and still care for that person. Seeing people as people doesn’t proscribe a particular type of relationship with them. But if we’re seeking emotional distance, I’m not so sure. We’ve discussed what happens after you see people as people, about how we become alive to their humanity, their needs, and desires and feel a sense of helpfulness toward them. Seeing another as a person means I have an active, caring concern for that person and implies a level of connection that appears to be more involved than allowed by the distance many are after. Remember, dangerous love allows us to see the humanity of another person so clearly that the other’s needs and desires matter as much to me as my own. It’s the sort of love that engenders empathy, respect, and ultimately trust in a way that illuminates a path toward reconciliation. Dangerous love is about us-preservation.

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Dangerous love transcends fear. It transforms conflict by calling upon us to let go of self-concern (“What will happen to me if l let down my walls and help the person I’m in conflict with?”) and embrace us-concern (“What will happen to us if I don’t?). I suspect that the reason the question “Am I seeing someone as a person if I don’t want anything to do with that person anymore?” gets asked as much as it does is because somehow the process of conflict transformation can feel incomplete if it doesn’t lead to action. It doesn’t feel like dangerous love. I can see you as a person. I can quit blaming. I can end collusions. But conflict is ultimately transformed when we are reconciled. Changing the way we see another person is hard. Even harder is to then act upon that change and have the courage to treat someone we’ve been seeing as an It differently. Conflict transformation takes place at the deeper, emotional level of seeing. But true reconciliation digs even deeper to the spiritual and consciousness level. What is happening is hard to quantify in a mathematical formula. Reconciliation, writes John Paul Lederach, is the point where acknowledgment and forgiveness, justice and mercy, and security and peace meet. Reconciliation creates a space where the present can be reframed to encompass the pain of the past alongside the hope of the future: First, in an overall sense, reconciliation promotes an encounter between the open expression of the painful past, on the one hand, and the search for the articulation of a long-term, interdependent future, on the other hand. Second, reconciliation provides a place for truth and mercy to meet, where concerns for exposing what has happened and for letting go in favor of renewed relationship are validated and embraced. Third, reconciliation recognizes the need to give

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time and place to both justice and peace, where redressing the wrong is held together with the envisioning of a common, connected future.4

Lederach highlights four principles—truth, mercy, justice, and peace—as major components of any reconciliation process. These elements of reconciliation lie at the core of dangerous love. They explain what we can do after we turn first. These four strands of reconciliation allow us to move from “I see this person as a person now but don’t want to have anything to do with her” to “I am connected to this person and seek to strengthen my commitment to seeing her as a person in the future.” Without reconciliation, we are doomed to repeat the past. With reconciliation, we learn from the past in a way that helps us build a brighter future together. The next two chapters dive deeper into how truth, mercy, justice, and peace help us. Make the most dangerous move.

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CHAPTER 17

TRUTH, MERCY, AND JUSTICE Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. — MARY OLIVE R

A colleague who works in the restorative justice field in New Zealand once told me of a powerful exercise she uses when introducing inmates who have been convicted of violent crimes to the families of their victims for the first time. It’s clear, by the dynamics in the room, who has been the victimizer and who is the victim. One person is in handcuffs and a prison jumpsuit. The other is free to come and go. The expectation is that the victim’s family member is there to explain how much pain the prisoner has caused. The prisoner is there to admit to causing the pain and to apologize. My colleague’s first question to both victim and victimizer is meant to level the playing field, to show that all of us are capable of both inflicting and receiving pain: “Can you think of a time when you’ve really hurt someone

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and a time when someone has hurt you and share it with us today?” Everyone has a story to tell—on both sides. By the time they are finished telling their stories, they are ready, for the first time, to really see each other and start walking the path of reconciliation. The first strand of reconciliation is about the power of narrative and truth. To reconcile, people often need an unfiltered account of what happened during the conflict. When we embrace the truth about both ourselves and others and when we take accountability for the way we’ve been seeing and treating others and do so without justification or fear, we invite others to see us differently and to see themselves differently too. Sharing experiences or stories, even ones that makes us look bad, is the first step to invite empathy, understanding, and trust in the most discouraging of relationships. Dangerous love requires us to be open to alternative, expanded stories about both of us—stories that expose both our weaknesses and our worth, stories that open us up to the idea that we are involved in the same sorts of self-deceptions that invite us to see others as Its. That’s one thing victim and victimizer have in common. The foundation to changing the narrative from me to we lies in our questions. The questions we ask about the people we are in destructive conflict with almost always lead us to war. The questions we ask from a space of dangerous love almost always lead us to peace. For example, from a smog view of conflict, we typically focus on the impact the conflict is having on ourselves. So, we ask questions like, “What am I am going through? How is this conflict making my life hard? In what ways have others added to that pain?”

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When we respond with dangerous love, we typically focus on the impact we are having on others, and the questions suddenly reverse: “What are they going through? How is the conflict making their life hard? In what ways have I added to that pain?” Ask the first set of questions and we download a treasure trove of justification that amplifies the hurt and places blame at the feet of those we are struggling with. Ask the second set of questions and we open up the possibility that the stories we’ve been telling about both ourselves and them is incomplete. First, even the most challenging people in our lives have a backstory and their own long list of justifications that have led them to this conflict space with us. In fact, the one thing we definitely have in common is that both of us have felt burdens and pain and have used justification to separate ourselves from others in the past and from each other in the present. Second, the story we’ve been telling about ourselves has also been incomplete. Yes, it may be true that we’ve been mistreated and that our mistreatment wasn’t justified. But it’s equally true that, either in the present or the past, we’ve mistreated others and no matter how badly they’ve mistreated us, our mistreatment of them is on us. Dangerous love invites us back into a space where we are feeling dissonance, where we can question whether our justifications and stories are the entire story. It’s a space that implores us to reverse the questions we ask—questions that lead to curiosity about others’ humanity instead of our pain—a space that leads to profound changes in the way we see others, a space that allows us to feel light. The telling and hearing of truth makes both the teller and the hearer stronger.

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From Truth to Mercy When we have mustered the courage to acknowledge the pain we have caused and to take responsibility for our actions, a powerful call for mercy comes with it. Mercy or forgiveness, when I see others as people, is about dangerous love. After Bishop Tutu’s positive experiences in South Africa with the TRC, he began traveling to conflict zones around the world, imploring people to break the cycle of revenge and hatred that had consumed them, to acknowledge their hurtful actions toward one and another—and to forgive. Unfortunately, Tutu’s message of forgiveness and reconciliation wasn’t a popular one. The people of Rwanda, Northern Ireland, Israel, and Palestine wanted justice for their enemies, and Tutu’s message was taking away the justifications that they had so carefully and painfully built. Tutu was labeled a Nazi, a sellout, soft. Why? If people have hurt us, we are likely to see them as Its. If others are Its to us (as they were to the people Tutu came to speak to), then forgiveness can appear both weak and threatening. Tutu’s message that there would be no justice without mercy fell on deaf ears. When we are in the throes of collusion, we want justice for others before we consider mercy. I’ve felt the same way, with much less provocation, when someone has implored me to forgive when the wounds I feel while still trapped in collusion remain fresh and unhealed. Nevertheless, when I see someone as a person, suddenly the need to both offer and ask for forgiveness feels critical to repairing the broken connections between us. For Tutu, there was no future without forgiveness:

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Forgiving and being reconciled are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the pain, the degradation, the truth. It can even make things worse. It is a risky undertaking but in the end, it is worthwhile, because in the end dealing with the real situation helps to bring real healing. . . . Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what happened seriously and not minimizing it. . . . We are declaring our faith in the future of a relationship and in the capacity of the wrongdoer to make a new beginning on a course that will be different from the path that caused us the wrong. We are saying here is a chance to make a new beginning. It is an act of faith that the wrongdoer can change.1

Forgiveness is not cheap or soft. It takes courage, suffering, a vision that mercy builds trust and incubates love. Forgiveness is transformative—for us and the people we are forgiving. Truth and mercy lay the moral foundation to create more than just peace between individuals. It creates the transformative framework for real structural and direct change in our homes, our communities, and the world and opens the path to justice and peace.

The Justice That Restores Instead of Destroys Truth and mercy are important steps in turning toward another person. The next steps—justice and peace—are critical in sustaining that turn. For us simply to do our own personal work, so that we feel better about others and ourselves through truth and mercy, is not enough. In addition, we feel the need to make

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right, to the best of our ability and capacity, what we and sometimes others helped make wrong. Soon after my family moved to Hawaii, my eight-yearold son had the first major setback of his young life. Right before we moved from Connecticut, I bought him a new bike. We lived in an area where it was really difficult for him to get out and ride. But in Hawaii, in the little town we moved to, he was free to roam. He loved that bike. He took it with him everywhere. He was a trusting soul, however, and I constantly had to remind him to lock up his bike to keep it from being stolen. He was especially prone to leaving the bike, unlocked, out in front of our home in the evening. One morning as he ran out the door to go to school, I heard a large howl come from our tiny front lawn. “My bike is gone!” Sure enough, his bike wasn’t there, and my son was devastated. I know some parents would have pulled the old “I told you so” game with him. Having a dad who was a conflict transformation professor was a much worse fate. I had been teaching reconciliation in one of my classes that day and we were dealing with the particularly tough issue of Hawaiian sovereignty. In 1993, Congress passed a resolution, which President Bill Clinton signed, apologizing to native Hawaiians for the illegal overthrow of their sovereign kingdom by the citizens of America in 1893. The bill read, in part, The Congress . . . apologizes to Native Hawaiians on behalf of the people of the United States for the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii on January 17, 1893 . . . and the deprivation of the rights of Native Hawaiians to self-determination.

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[It] expresses its commitment to acknowledge the ramifications of the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii, in order to provide a proper foundation for reconciliation between the United States and the Native Hawaiian people.2

It was an amazing, contrite apology by the most powerful country in the world to the people of its fiftieth state. Native Hawaiians everywhere were stunned that their claims of injustice, which had fallen on deaf ears for one hundred years, were finally being acknowledged. The possibilities of reconciliation never seemed better. However, the resolution contained fine print. In Section 3, the following disclaimer appeared: “Nothing in this Joint Resolution is intended to serve as a settlement of any claims against the United States.” In other words, we illegally stole your country, we’re really sorry about it and we aren’t going to do anything more than apologize. You’re welcome. Many people don’t see the problem with the apology. “What is the United States supposed to do? Give the island back? It’s been one hundred years. Everyone that could’ve possibly lost something is gone. It’s been acknowledged, an apology has come, it’s time to move on.” I see my son’s misfortune with his bike as a metaphor about the importance of justice and restitution in any reconciliation process. I asked my son, “What if you found out that one of your classmates stole your bike. You confront him and he admits he stole your bike and he apologizes. Would everything be good between you two?” My son scrunched up his face, tilted his head a bit, and said, “Yeah, but what about my bike?” I continued, “What if your friend said, ‘Hey, let’s let the past be the past. I’m admitting to what I did. I’m apologizing.

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Let’s not let a little bike come between us.’ And every day as you are walking to school, you see him fly past you on your bike?” He laughed. “How can he really be sorry if he’s still riding my bike? That makes no sense. In fact, I think it would make me madder.” He was right. And “What about my bike?” became a catchphrase in our home. In the case of the Native Hawaiians, the question was, “What about our land?” “What about all the years we served as essentially indentured servants on the lands we once owned?” “What about the disproportionately high levels of poverty and abuse that affect us?” “How can you say you are sorry but then say nothing in this apology can serve as a claim against you?” Part of the reconciliation process is making sure that justice, in the truest sense of the word, is taking place. Dangerous love includes a desire to make those who are hurting whole. Before we can start fresh, we have to clean up the debts of the past. The solution might be as simple as returning a bike. Other situations are more complicated. Ellis Cose, in his book about reparations, entitled Bone to Pick, asks the harder questions: What is the debt for the Holocaust? What is the value of lives lost to slavery? How much do you pay for a “disappeared” father or son? . . . And what about torture? Do you pay for nightmares that never go away? Do you compensate—or try to compensate—survivors for losses and injustices that span generations?3

As difficult as those questions are, they can’t be ignored. Telling people it happened too long ago or that there isn’t an easy solution doesn’t invite them to move on.

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How do we implement truth, mercy, and justice toward the people we are in conflict with?

E x e rci s e 1

Uncovering the Truth Confronting our past conduct in conflict can be painful. It is also necessary. As part of the collusion cycle, we have thought and done things that have caused disconnection and pain. While the temptation might be high to say, “Let’s just move on,” acknowledging our part in the conflict to those who have been colluding with us is important—even when they aren’t ready to reciprocate. How do we reach the point where we can do that? Answer the following questions if you can: • What have I done to sustain this collusion? • In what ways have I been seeing others as Its? • What are my assumptions about them that have been fueling the way I see them? • Could there be other potential explanations for what they are doing and why? • Is it possible that they are doing the best they can? • How would the situation be different if I had seen them, even their negative behaviors, differently? • In what ways have I added to their challenges and pain? • What has this collusion cost them?

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E x e rci s e 2

Finding Mercy Being able to see the role we’ve played in a conflict should lead us to mercy. Given our past thoughts and actions in the conflict, how can we withhold the very thing that will bring healing to both others and us? Consider the following questions: • If I refuse to forgive, what will it likely invite in other people? • Given my answers in exercise 1, what reasons have I been telling myself for why I have not or cannot forgive them? • Do those reasons hold up in the face of my answers in exercise 1? • If I have participated in this collusion and caused harm, are they the ones who should be forgiving me? • How can I use forgiveness as a way of bridging the divide between us?

E x e rci s e 3

Justice and Wholeness Given your role in the conflict and the costs associated with it, try to answer the following questions. Of course, sometimes there’s nothing that we can do to make a person whole again. Don’t let that discourage you. As we will learn in chapter 20, small and simple things signal our willingness to reconnect in ways that invite others to turn.

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• How have I emotionally added to the burdens of the people I have been in conflict with? What sort of actions could I take to lighten that load? • How have I physically added to the burdens of the people I have been in conflict with? How can I “give them back their bike” in a way that shows my commitment to helping them feel whole again? • Is there anything else I can do to help signal to them that I see the costs of this conflict and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to share that cost with them? Dangerous love means that we can see the obstacles in front of others as we try to reconnect with them and we’re willing to prioritize our reconnection over money or ease. Just as importantly, it means we need to put measures into place to hold ourselves accountable for not repeating the mistakes of the past. The people with whom we are in relationship with must know that we will act to end the cycle of collusion and make sure it never happens again.

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CHAPTER 18

KEEPING THE PEACE Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual. — V IK TOR FR AN KL

“My dad says you’re a liar,” Phillip’s stepson, Jackson, said to him on a drive home from school. Not many words are harder to hear than that. For years, Phillip was engulfed by the smog view of conflict. He grew up the son of an abusive alcoholic who left his family when he was young. Phillip took his anger out on anyone he could. It ruined his relationships at home, at work, and with the people he was trying to serve. People referred to him as arrogant, a jerk, a troublemaker. Then, about a decade ago, Phillip began pondering the type of person he had become—how he, not others, was the biggest source of his problems. Phillip began to change. He began to own up to the truth about who he was being. He sought forgiveness. He tried to make things right where he

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could. He committed to practicing dangerous love at home, at work, and in the world. He eventually remarried and started a new family. He was a changed man. But, now his commitment to dangerous love was being severely tested. Phillip knew Jackson’s father well. “[Jackson’s] dad and I are really different people,” Phillip explained to me. “He resented me before I began dating his ex-wife and more so after I married her.” The invitation to start a destructive conflict with his stepson and his wife’s ex was right there for the taking. Who would blame Phillip for going off and setting his stepson and his father straight? Living dangerous love is hard when justification like that is dropped in your lap. Phillip took a deep breath and then said to Jackson, “Well, I know your dad. He’s a good man. I’m not sure why he’s saying that. But he must have a good reason.” The answer disarmed Jackson. But Phillip wasn’t done. Phillip spent the next few minutes admitting to Jackson that he hasn’t always been truthful, that his life had been filled with mistakes in the past. While he had no idea what Jackson’s dad was referring to specifically, Phillip had been lying his whole life. He couldn’t and shouldn’t take offense at the truth. But that wasn’t the whole truth about Phillip. He had changed. Phillip’s newfound commitment to truth was creating the space for him to say what he said to Jackson. Jackson took everything in. He listened carefully as Phillip turned first. Then Jackson said, “You know, I think my dad must have gotten this one wrong.” Jackson wasn’t going to ally with his father this time. Too much light was emanating from Phillip for Jackson to take the bait.

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That was the turning point in Phillip’s relationship with Jackson—and his relationship with Jackson’s dad. When offered the opportunity to go back to war, Phillip instead stayed firmly planted on the path to peace. Phillip followed the steps we’ve outlined throughout the book. He had been practicing them for years for a moment such as this. 1. He let go of his fear of conflict. He had spent a decade transforming his smog view into a cocoon view. 2. He let go of his fear of his stepson and his wife’s ex. Phillip was clearly seeing both of them as people. That’s why he could react the way he did. 3. He turned first. Phillip knew the only way to stop the conflict from turning into a collusion was to quickly turn first and tell the truth about his past. 4. He invited others to turn. Phillip’s decision to confess his weaknesses helped his stepson respect him more, not less. His honesty invited Jackson to turn. After we’ve gone through the process of truth, mercy, and justice, our goal is to operationalize dangerous love in a way that convinces the people we are in conflict with that such a conflict will never happen again. Carolyn Nordstrom’s book A Different Kind of War Story tells the harrowing tale of the fifteen-year civil war in Mozambique that took the lives of over a million people (mostly women and children) and decimated lands, homes, and the culture. After the war was over, soldiers, mostly young children, returned home to their villages. Nordstrom documents a unique healing process, rooted in Mozambican cultural traditions, that gave the people of the country the courage to deal with their violent past, heal, and put them back on the road to reconciliation.

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Instituted by the local Curandeiros, or healers, the process was meant to scrape the violence from the souls of the very people who had caused so much pain. Nordstrom quotes an older woman from a village devastated by the civil war: The importance of the Curandeiro lies not only in her or his ability to treat the diseases and physical ravages of war, but in their ability to take the violence out of a person and to reintegrate them back into a healthy lifestyle. You see, people who have been exposed to the war, well, some of this violence can affect them, stick with them, like a rash on the soul. They carry this violence with them back to their communities and their homes and their lives, and they begin to act in ways they have never acted before. They bring the war back home with them—they become more confused, more violent, more dangerous, and so too does the whole community. . . . They [the Curandeiros] cut the person off from any holds the war has on him or her, they scrape off the violence from their spirit, they make them forget what they have seen and felt and experienced in the war, they make them alive again, alive and part of the community. . . . They uneducate their war education. They remind the person how to be a part of their family, . . . to get along, to be part of the community. They cure the violence that others have taught.1

As part of that process, a unique form of restitution began. If a woman was killed before she had children, the person responsible for her death would offer a young girl from his family to replace the loss.2 “We do not fight one side or the other in this war—we fight the war itself this way,” said one survivor of the war in Mozambique. “We resolve the war in this way. And we heal the war in this way.”3 The only way to win the war, the people determined, was to scrape off the barnacles of violence that inflicted their souls and prepare for peace—a peace that could withstand

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the inevitable conflicts that would arise. They committed themselves to stopping such violence from ever happening again. They fundamentally changed the way they saw each other and focused their energies on the real enemy—violence and war itself. Wrote one young man, Santos, after this reconciliation process: Time passes by and it never comes back Too much violence The unstoppable cannon Stunned people running aimlessly The moment has come Kidnaps without days, hours, minutes Helpless children Who do not know where they came from, or where they will go Who will justify this moment? The regions of Coloa, Muaquia Without people because of these [war] criminals My uncles and aunts killed without thought How can one forget this moment? How can we call peace? Where is peace? How can I return to my homeland? Talking up arms? Talking? Nothing is impossible in this world Everything depends on us And it is we who will conquer with Peace.4

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Direct Peace Visible

Invisible

Structural Peace

Cultural Peace

Figure 18. Galtung’s peace triangle. Adapted from Johan Galtung, "Cultural Violence," Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 3 (August 1990): 291-305.

Figure 18 True cultural change is the sustainable kind that lasts beyond a moment. Galtung’s violence triangle, which we discussed in chapter 15, has a corollary called the peace triangle (figure 18). The peace triangle teaches us that if we could achieve cultural peace or the ability to no longer justify violence toward others, it would motivate us to make real changes in the structures of our communities in the world to prevent direct violence from happening.5 Cultural peace should lead to structural peace and ultimately to direct peace. They are all interconnected.

But What If They Won’t Turn? “But what if they won’t join hands with me?” is one of the toughest questions that can come from pursuing the path of dangerous love. After changing our view of conflict, changing the way we see another person, and changing our stories about ourselves and others in ways that invite space for us to be reconciled, what if they just don’t turn? What if, despite our best efforts to love them dangerously, they still struggle to love us back?

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Part of loving dangerously is realizing that others may struggle to pursue reconciliation with us. They may struggle to let go of justification and blame. They may not be able to acknowledge their wrongs or forgive wrongs that we or others have committed. They may refuse to right their own wrongs until they feel that they are made whole. Their hearts may still struggle with the pains of the past. They may still feel stuck. When we encounter others who are struggling in these ways, we can resist and say, “If they will not change, then neither will I!” Or we can remember that not too long ago, or perhaps in other relationships in our life, we are struggling to change. So, we say, “I am willing to change, even if they aren’t ready to yet.” The vulnerability we feel in such moments can be overwhelming, as if too much is at risk, as if loving them this way, without reciprocation, is too dangerous. It will hurt if they can’t reciprocate, no doubt. Dangerous love won’t keep us from pain and suffering. But it will help us understand that a broken heart is an open heart and an open heart, is the only way to live. I’m reminded of the lyrics of Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem,” where he sings about light getting through the cracks. Dangerous love is how the light gets in. It can never be forced or demanded. It can only be invited. If others need us to acknowledge where we have been wrong, perhaps we will be willing to acknowledge it. If they need forgiveness, perhaps we will see how to offer it freely. If they need to be made whole, perhaps we will feel the desire to work to relieve their suffering. And we will learn that justice, in its purest form, does not seek the destruction of the other but rather freely and willingly works to build up what was torn down.

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A paradox lies at the heart of true reconciliation. When others are people to us, while we do all that we can to turn first and remove the obstacles that stand in the way of reconnection, we do not require or demand the same in return. When we practice dangerous love, we do not need an apology to offer our own. We do not need forgiveness, only to forgive. We are willing to right our wrongs, even if others are not yet willing to right theirs. Reconciliation is the miracle that reconnects us to others and makes us whole.

E x e rci s e

Operationalizing Peace What does operationalizing peace look like at home or in the office? It’s loving intentionally. It’s putting the following practices into place to ensure that what has happened in the past won’t happen again: • Take the time to check in. When we feel connected to people and people feel connected to us, the chances that we fall out of dangerous love diminish. Regularly check in with people about how they are feeling, what they are struggling with, and how you might help. • Spend more time building relationships and listening and less time teaching or correcting. When we do make time with people, make sure that it isn’t spent just fixing them or teaching them. Do things for the sake of the relationship. Listen without an agenda. I’ve spoken at numerous retreats over the years, and the ones that are most successful find a pretty equal balance between presentations and team-building activities that invite connection. The same is true for

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families on the weekend. The Arbinger Institute’s Influence Pyramid is a great guide to see where you need to focus your attention.6 • Ask questions instead of jumping to conclusions. When conflict does rear its head, take a deep breath and ask yourself, “What is it that I don’t understand?” When we are seeing people as objects, we are quick to make assumptions about motives and character. When we see people as people, we are curious why people think, feel, and act the way they do. The question “why” is a magic one. The more you ask why, the more understanding you’ll have and the better you’ll be able to find a collaborative solution to your problems. • Stay consistent. People will likely be suspicious of our intentions if they notice a sudden turn in the way we see them. They may suspect that we have ulterior motives or are trying to manipulate them. Trust is built through consistency. While it might be incredibly difficult, it is important to keep loving them, even when they don’t love you back. And if you slip up, be quick to admit, apologize without justification, and go back to loving again. By making small, incremental improvements in the way we live and work with other people, we slowly start to rebuild the trust that opens up space for them to turn as well. Consider some of the themes we’ve discussed in the book: • Changing our view of conflict from the smog way to the cocoon way. • Seeing people as people.

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• Being committed to following our senses of helpfulness and being personally accountable when we fail to honor them. • Being willing to forgive and let go and to make right the wrongs we have done and to stop the cycle of blame and mutual dehumanization from going forward. • Having the courage to turn first. All these ideas create space where reconciliation can flourish.

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CHAPTER 19

THE LONG-SHORT WAY Said Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananiah: “Once a child got the better of me. “I was traveling, and I met with a child at a crossroads. I asked him, ‘which way to the city?’ and he answered: ‘This way is short and long, and this way is long and short.’ “I took the ‘short and long’ way. I soon reached the city but found my approach obstructed by gardens and orchards. So I retraced my steps and said to the child: ‘My son, did you not tell me that this is the short way?’ “Answered the child: ‘Did I not tell you that it is also long?’” — ERUVIN 53b

“This word peace—we hate this word.” Ibrahim was an Arabic teacher at a local high school. He was in his sixties, had weary eyes, and had a very jaded outlook on the future. He had seen peace process after peace process promise success and then fail. He watched as various international organizations came into his village promising relief, only to pack their bag months later when they

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didn’t see immediate results or their funding ran out. He stood by helplessly as the city of Jerusalem began building a road through the middle of his village, disturbing the quiet tranquility that once existed there. Ibrahim’s nephew, Ahmed, was a leader in an organization called PeacePlayers. Ahmed had given up a promising career to join PeacePlayers, much to the chagrin of his family. Ahmed had brought me to Ibrahim’s home for dinner to meet his family, and when Ibrahim saw the PeacePlayers shirt Ahmed was wearing, he furrowed his brow and let loose: “Peace, peace, everyone always comes talking about peace. You know the problem with this word? Everyone talks about peace. No one does peace. We are tired of hearing a word that is not real.” Ahmed tried to apologize to me, but there was no need. While it’s certainly not politically correct to say “we hate peace,” I understood Ibrahim’s larger point. No one hates peace. Some people just hate the soft, ineffective peace that comes through slogans, benefit concerts, and ’60s tie-dyed T-shirts. Some people also hate the type of peace that comes from the barrel of a gun—figuratively or literally—the sort of peace that forces us to change so that others can maintain the status quo. Both sorts of peace are typically lazy, undisciplined, and uncommitted. That is why they are ineffective and turn people off. Ibrahim’s belief that people only talk peace but never do peace is the reality on the ground in many homes and communities in the world. For so many, peace belongs in the world of ideas and platitudes, not in the harsh light of real life. We like to talk about changing the world. We may even do a service project or sign a petition or maybe wave a

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candle at a rally. But when it comes to doing peace, real sustainable conflict transformation and reconciliation, we often find that our efforts are woefully inadequate. I call what Ibrahim detests the “short-long way” of peacebuilding. We try to find the fastest, cheapest, most convenient, and least demanding path possible. However, walking that path inevitably leads, as Rabbi Yehoshua ben Chananiah found out, to obstacles. Short-term gains lead to long-term headaches. Too many of us, both in our family lives and in our larger efforts to promote change, follow the short-long way, as shown in figure 19. “What’s the quickest way?” I’m often asked when individuals and organizations in conflict call. Rarely do they ask

Both Turned Away

You Turn First

You Invite Me to Turn

Figure 19. The short-long way. Figure 19

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for “the most impactful way.” We want the Instagram post, something we can quickly point to that shows progress. True conflict transformation and reconciliation takes time, however. Generally speaking, the deeper and longer the conflict, the more time it will take to help us and others see each other. I generally use a measure called the Oatmeal Rule. If you immediately wash a bowl of oatmeal after eating it, the cleanup is pretty easy. Let it sit for four hours, and your dishwashing job becomes exponentially harder. Wait three days? You might have to soak and scrub the bowl for a week. My students often gasp when they read a line in John Paul Lederach’s book Building Peace about the commitment to sustainable peacebuilding requiring decade-long and even generational thinking.1 It’s then that I quote them this line from the Great Law of the Iroquois. “The Peacemaker taught us about the Seven Generations. He said, when you sit in council for the welfare of the people, you must not think of yourself or of your family, not even of your generation. He said, make your decisions on behalf of the seven generations coming, so that they may enjoy what you have today.”2 Seven generations extend across roughly 150 years. Most of our attention spans struggle to last several hours. Dangerous love takes work, commitment, patience, and dedication. It requires the long-short way, as shown in figure 20. The long-short way tells us that peace shouldn’t be an adjective or a noun. It should be a verb. Nor should peace be just an absence of destructive conflict, though it’s a start.

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Both Turned Away

I Turn First

I Invite You to Turn

Figure 20. The long-short way. Figure 20

Peace should be active. It is about a shared sense of responsibility for our fellow brothers and sisters throughout the world. It’s Miriam having the courage to help her enemy, Mahmoud. It’s a group of frustrated employees being willing to see the people who had given them bad reviews as people. It’s Desmond Tutu realizing that he needed his enemy, F. W. de Klerk, to truly find peace in South Africa and dedicating a decade of his life to building a mechanism, the TRC, to make it happen. It’s Phillip refusing to revert back to the smog way of conflict after being challenged by his stepson. But so often, our efforts fall short of those lofty ideals. That’s why I love the term peacebuilding. It’s active. It implies that peace is not something you just pray or wish for.

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It requires hard work, getting your hands dirty. It requires a plan and commitment—and an unlimited supply of patience. Peacebuilding is the long-short way. In fact, the long-short way of peacebuilding is what took me to Ibrahim’s home that day. I’d been drawn to PeacePlayers because its mission was about helping people from different sides of the conflict see each other as people through the game of basketball.

Playing with the Enemy PeacePlayers was founded in 2001 by Brendan and Sean Tuohey, two brothers from Washington, DC. They were former college basketball players who had a crazy idea: kids who learned to play together could learn to live together. The Tuoheys’ goal for the organization was to bridge divides, develop leaders, and change perceptions in divided communities through the game of basketball. They built their first team in South Africa in 2001, opened a program in Northern Ireland the next year, and moved to Israel in 2005 and Cyprus in 2008. In 2017, they started, with the help of Nike, domestic programs in Detroit, Brooklyn, Baltimore, Chicago, and Los Angeles focused on conflict divides between at-risk youth. In addition, they’ve trained and collaborated with twenty-two other sport-forgood programs in countries across five continents. The nonprofit has won numerous awards and has created a unique model for sustainable peacebuilding. In each community, the pattern PeacePlayers developed is essentially the same. The staff picks two neighboring divided communities. Protestant, Israeli, Greek Cypriot on one side of the track, Catholic, Palestinian, Turkish Cypriot on the other. They spend time creating single-identity programs for youth between the ages of ten and eighteen that

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focus on building basic fundamentals in basketball. After a certain competency is reached, they begin “twinning” the two communities together in mixed team settings. The kids learn each other’s names, play silly get-to-know-you games, and eventually start playing basketball together. It can be rough going at first. Many of the kids have never had meaningful contact with people on the other side before. It’s not uncommon to see Protestants refusing to pass the ball to Catholics or vice versa. But it’s hard to play basketball without collaboration. Eventually, the competitiveness drive in these young people kicks in. When an Israeli passes the ball to a Palestinian for a layup and they high-five coming back down the floor, a special, tangible shift begins to occur. But that magic, so palpable if you are there on the court to see it, doesn’t “magically” make the staff’s job easy.

Nine Years, One Shot Getting people to give up a sense of security to play basketball is a challenge in the beginning. Parents are resistant. Communities look on in suspicion. The kids are nervous about interacting with the other side. And besides all that, most of the young participants can’t even dribble a basketball. Wars, terrorism, political shifts, and unrest are constantly threatening the process. PeacePlayers is forging something new, something impossible, in the least fertile soil in the world. Every time community conflicts flare, parents pull their kids out of the program, coaches get angry, and those harrowing, exhausting two steps up the mountain feel like three stumbling steps back. In short, it is physically and emotionally exhausting work that rarely, if ever, says thank you in return.

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PeacePlayers staff are in the midst of thinking in decades and generationally about the work they are doing. I’ve heard them talk about the impact their work will have seven generations from now. Peacebuilding requires such vision, commitment, and determination. I’ve visited the program more than fifty times over the past fourteen years. I have attended workshops with the coaches and staff, played basketball with the kids, and been inspired by this small band of peace pioneers who put aside careers, family, and friends to make a difference in their communities. In the midst of such an endeavor, it’s easy to lose the forest among the trees. We may feel as if progress isn’t being made or that our efforts are only a drop of water in a vast sea. How can any one person or group of people make peace when the odds and obstacles are stacked so heavily against them? Nine years into the project, the answer to that question came into sharper focus in Jerusalem. In April 2014, the PeacePlayers Under-18 All-Stars team—the only mixed Israeli and Palestinian girls basketball team in Israel at the time—made it to the Israeli National League Championship game versus Elitzur Yavne. The fact that these young women, many of whom had never seen a basketball before they started PeacePlayers, were even competing in the league was extraordinary. The game was extraordinarily tight. Elitzur Yavne hit a shot with seven seconds left in the game to put them up by one point. The PeacePlayers team rushed down the court and with two seconds left, a young Israeli girl named Toot hit the game-winning shot. As the girls fell into a mass huddle of celebration, their parents joined in, then the PeacePlayers staff. There were no more Israelis or Palestinians—just friends, teammates,

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joined together as one. It took nine years, but it was impossible to ignore the work of PeacePlayers anymore. As impressive as their work was on the court, what they did the next few days off the court was even more amazing. The next morning, those same girls all shuffled into a small classroom in a local hotel for facilitator training in conjunction with the Arbinger Institute. The curriculum uses short lessons, games, and basketball to teach participants about the power of seeing people as people. The girls were participating in a program for PeacePlayers called the Leadership Development Program (LDP). The LDP’s purpose is directly tied to sustainable growth for the PeacePlayers team members. The idea is that after four to six years in the organization as a player, members of the LDP graduate from players to assistant coaches and then to coaches. They were learning how to teach the younger participants in the program the same curriculum they themselves had learned over all those years. These young women spoke eloquently about how relationships both at home and with people on the other side had changed. When they stood up to teach, they spoke with the conviction of someone who had tried, failed, and then tried again to live their lives a different way. Their change is key to becoming the leaders PeacePlayers envisioned. Said one of the Israeli participants, “I learned the importance of sharing a personal story during every session that will both humble us in front of the kids and humanize us to them. If the kids see that I have viewed people as objects just as they have, then they can feel more comfortable and open to believing the ideas I am teaching. “We are [now] the leaders for the kids. The kids want to be like us, so we make a great example for them. The kids

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trust us, so when we explain to them the peace curriculum, it makes a strong impact on them.” In that moment, everyone captured a joint vision of how PeacePlayers could grow, and all LDP members left determined to make an impact on the places that they lived. They didn’t have to wait long for the opportunity to use everything they had learned.

The Court of Last Resort Several weeks after the training, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians took a major turn for the worse. Three Israeli young men were brutally murdered in the West Bank. In retaliation, a fourteen-year-old Palestinian boy was burned to death in the forest. Soon missiles were being fired from Gaza into Israel. The Israeli army invaded. Over a thousand lives were lost—many of them women and children. In moments like these, even the strongest of us struggle to see our enemies as people. When there is so much pain and hurting, it’s hard to transcend all of that and still see clearly. PeacePlayers programs were stopped out of safety concerns for the participants. With the program on hold and anger growing, the LDP participants went out on their own in an attempt to use their newfound skills to make peace. Some of them organized an iftar meal on the last day of Ramadan for both Israelis and Palestinians (it may have been the only iftar meal in the whole country to include both sides) and afterward played basketball into the night. Others went to their schoolmates, teachers, and family members and shared positive stories about the other side, urging them to speak out for a peaceful solution to the problems they faced. One Israeli LDP participant commented,

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I think it is very important that we all met despite what is going on around us because it shows that we not only can come together when things are easy but also when things are difficult. . . . We are putting our frustrations toward a peaceful path instead of feeling revenge and anger as other kids our age do. I wish everyone would realize that the other side is also human and they are just people like us. I wish every single person living in this conflict would realize we are all just people and we shouldn’t judge others just by what we see in the media.

Another Palestinian LDP member added, What is going on in our countries affects our lives in a big way, but it does not affect how we feel about each other. No matter what happens, we love each other, and we have a bond that nothing can break. PeacePlayers has taught us that we don’t have to think and feel the way many others do, that we can look at the situation a different way and see everyone as people.

In the face of real danger, they kept crossing boundaries, speaking out, and insisting on seeing the humanity of one another. In October 2014, these LDP members got together officially for the first time since the war as they arrived at the airport in Tel Aviv to travel from Jerusalem to Washington, DC, and New York on a grant from the US State Department SportsUnited program. They met with government officials as peace ambassadors, played basketball in the White House with US National Security Advisor Susan Rice, sat down for an interview with 60 Minutes in New York, and spoke (even the Palestinians) at a large Jewish community center in Stamford, Connecticut. It wasn’t uncommon to see them, Palestinian and Israeli, hold hands as they walked down the streets of Times Square

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or doing each other’s hair on long subway trips. They shared food, sang songs and one night, as a fundraiser was winding down, broke into what can only be described as a rave— dancing the night away. One participant in particular, Sharon, was deeply moved by the experience. Her father was a tough Jerusalem cop who had been taught through his trade to see Palestinians as objects. Her parents were reluctant to let her participate in the program. But the opportunity to play basketball at a high level drove her to PeacePlayers. Things didn’t start easy for her. After her first game, she made racist slurs against several of the Arab players in the program. She hid her participation from her friends, leaving out the fact that she was interacting with Palestinians at PeacePlayers. Slowly, Sharon began making friends with Palestinians. Over the years, those bonds strengthened to the point that she began coaching her own PeacePlayers team. As she prepared to leave for her mandatory military service in the Israeli army, she had fundamentally changed not only the way she saw the Palestinians she’s played with but also the way she saw her enemies. This is what she wrote on Facebook (shared with her permission), for all of her Israeli family and friends to read after she returned from the trip: The trip matured me, taught me how much this place, this organization that I’m a part of, is really significant, and can really be successful. People don’t really understand the importance of this group. In the beginning I tried to explain myself to other people and I left out some important details, because I was afraid of their reactions about the fact that I play on a mixed team, and that I’m part of a project with Arabs. But no, I made a mistake. The things I left out, that

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I didn’t tell, didn’t talk about, they are the most important things. So, yes, now I dare to say, and not just dare—I am P-RO-U-D to say that I play basketball, even though I’m a girl, and yes, I’m in a project with amazing Arabs who showed me the right way to be a human being. And the tears that are flowing down my face are not from shame, not from fear, and not from anger; rather from joy, joy that fills my heart like family. People will probably read this post and won’t really appreciate it, they’ll say “she’s crazy.” But it’s real—this whole speech is meant to open people’s eyes. The whole world is busy hating, and [thinking how] they can annihilate and destroy, but no one really pays attention to the love that exists in the world, the sensitivity, the belief that people can live without existential fear!

Sharon and her Palestinian and Israeli friends returned to a broken, fractured country, more determined than ever to be the change they wished to see in their homes and communities.3 That is dangerous love, the sort of loves that can atone for even the worst of sins.

A Sign of Atonement Several years later, many of the same girls came back to Stamford, Connecticut, and were asked to speak to the same congregation, only this time in the synagogue during Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement—the holiest day of the year. The synagogue was full. I’ll never forget the closing words from Jasmine, one of PeacePlayer’s oldest LDP members: I know many of you are skeptical of what you have heard today. But I want you to consider me for a second. Here I am, a Muslim, Palestinian woman who grew up hating Jews, standing in your holy place, on your Day of Atonement, the

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church of my enemies, telling you that I love you. That I forgive you. That we can have peace. If that doesn’t make you believe, I don’t know what will.

After she was finished, members of the congregation, many with tears in their eyes, flocked to the girls to embrace them and thank them. Several told me it was the most powerful Yom Kippur sermon of their lives. So many would say what is happening with PeacePlayers was impossible. Here are people who should hate each other, who have every reason to fight, holding hands, dancing, speaking out, and dedicating their lives to the cause of seeing others as people. It’s taken over a decade, but something is happening in the Middle East that has the potential to fundamentally change the culture on the ground. These Israelis and Palestinians should not exist given the narratives we are so fond of using about Israel, but they do. The word peace that Ibrahim so hated, here it was. Not just talk. No singing “Kumbaya.” (Though there was some dancing and hand holding.) But instead, visioning, doing, leading, building—the longshort way. Everyday people are transforming, slowly but surely, one of the most complicated conflicts in the world—through dangerous love.

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CHAPTER 20

SMALL AND SIMPLE THINGS By small and simple things are great things brought to pass. — T HE B OOK OF MORMON

By now, if you’re anything like Ibrahim (or me, for that matter), the jaded pessimist in your mind has reached a fever pitch. The one constantly sowing fear and doubt. The one that tells you, yes, dangerous love might work in some of the situations you described, but it won’t work for me. The one that gasps, “Is this going to take years or decades?” The one that says, “While dangerous love may be achievable on a small scale, how could it ever work on the big conflicts we face in the world?” The one that asks, “So your example of this working on a large scale is a bunch of teenagers in the Middle East playing basketball? I don’t think Iran is all that intimidated.” And if dangerous love can’t work in North Korea or in the Middle East, is it really the answer? This is the part of the book where I take a deep breath and say, I know that voice well. It speaks to me daily as I watch the violence in the world escalate, as I see children

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dying of curable diseases and observe rampant discrimination in our workplaces and communities, as I witness the lack of empathy between family and community members. I look at the brokenness of our politics and the selfishness that has reached epidemic proportions in our material “me”driven culture and it’s easy to get discouraged. It screams even louder when I look at my own life and see myself failing to love dangerously over and over again. After more than a decade of conflict work, my world came apart several years ago: a debilitating bacterial infection in my stomach, a broken marriage that I could no longer hold together, a fragile child whom I struggled to keep alive. After years of helping others “peace” their lives back together, mine was ripping apart at every seam. As I dove headfirst into solving, and then failing to solve, the problems that were closing in all around me, my confidence waned. Every morning I’d wake up but not want to get up. I’d look in the mirror and avert my gaze from the man who was looking back at me. I was failing in every way someone could fail. All the years of studying peacebuilding and practicing it around the world couldn’t save me from myself. And I was ashamed. After mediating numerous marital conflicts, I was getting a divorce. My inability to balance my life as a husband and father with that as a professor and mediator had caused major problems in my marriage. I could help everyone else in the world but struggled to help our family. My children were suffering from my mistakes as well. Long trips away helping the people of the Middle East had taken their toll. Missed after-school activities, no time for help with homework, and a distracted, sometimes ailing dad who wasn’t as present as they needed me to be created fault lines in our relationship.

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My students were impacted too. My office hours shrunk. My personal stories went silent as I was afraid my students would learn the awful truth about me: while I preached peace, I struggled (mightily) to practice it. I was running from my mistakes, trying my best to hide my weaknesses, secretly afraid that if people really knew who I was, everything I knew and believed about peacebuilding would be instantly invalidated. My faith in my ability to help others withered. “Why would anyone,” I asked myself daily, “ever want help from someone as messed up as me?” So many things were wrong with both me and the world, and so many days those wrong things appeared to be winning. Many of us have had days when the forces of darkness appear to be drowning out the light, weeks and months when we feel like we are clinging to a sinking ship, years when the problems we face seem insurmountable. When that happens, it’s easy to get discouraged with both ourselves and others, to tell ourselves that we or they can’t do this. So why try? Yes, we may be stuck in debilitating patterns of inward thinking that aren’t easy to escape. We fail. I fail—all the time. But focusing on my failures and others’ is just more smog thinking. It’s blindness to the reality that we can and do have the ability to change. Conflict can be discouraging. But it also can give us hope. I remember these words from Desmond Tutu, as he described the horror and hope that came out of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission: I have come to realize the extraordinary capacity for evil that all of us have because we have now heard the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and there have been revelations of horrendous atrocities that people have committed. Any

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and every one of us could have perpetrated those atrocities. The people who were perpetrators of the most gruesome things didn’t have horns, didn’t have tails. They were ordinary human beings like you and me. That’s the one thing. Devastating! But the other, more exhilarating than anything that I have ever experienced—and something I hadn’t expected— to discover that we have an extraordinary capacity for good. People who suffered untold misery, people who should have been riddled with bitterness, resentment and anger come to the Commission and exhibit an extraordinary magnanimity and nobility of spirit in their willingness to forgive, and to say, “Hah! Human beings actually are fundamentally good.” Human beings are fundamentally good. The aberration, in fact, is the evil one, for God created us ultimately for God, for goodness, for laughter, for joy, for compassion, for caring.1

All of us have the ability to hurt and heal, to hate and love, to take and give. Our ability to become change agents dramatically increases when we believe—deep within our bones—that we and others can change.

The Beginning of the End of War A number of years ago I was invited to do a conflict transformation workshop in Ramallah in the West Bank. The audience comprised a number of Palestinian government officials. Somehow it wasn’t clearly communicated to them that I was not an official representative of the US government nor what the content of my workshop would be. When the workshop began, one of the officials stood and, over the course of the next twenty minutes, gave an impassioned critique of US policy toward Arabs, both in Palestine and in Egypt, where the first waves of the Arab Spring were taking hold.

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I couldn’t get a word in edgewise to inform the gentleman that I had no role in the government, I wasn’t making policy, and I did not have a direct line to those who did. He was frustrated—angry even. He felt that the world was against his people and that coming to a conflict transformation workshop run by an American added insult to injury. Several other officials followed his speech with words of support. They were begging for an end to direct violence and the underlying structures that supported it. A half hour later, I finally got to speak. My workshop was scheduled for only ninety minutes. Whatever I had planned was out the window. I felt the man’s frustration. I saw how much his people were suffering. I saw how much Israelis were suffering as well. Every action seemed to push them further to the brink. Everything I had prepared seemed insignificant compared to the challenges they were facing right now. “What was the point of conflict transformation workshop for a conflict that has no chance of ever being transformed?” he asked. His comments weren’t new to me. I encounter them wherever I go in conflicts big and small. They are an especially potent narrative in the Middle East—the dominant one, in fact. I never know quite what to say in moments like that. Asking people to have faith seems unfair. Faith has to be grounded in something. And that something is usually people—the very same people we distrust the most. And that got me thinking. “Can I ask you a question?” I said to the government official after I had finished explaining who I was and who I wasn’t. “How has the conflict between Israelis and

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Palestinians affected your people? What sorts of challenges does it create?” There was no shortage of answers. Fear, poverty, restriction of movement, resentment, and revenge were all popular responses from the officials in the room. “I don’t know what you were expecting today, but I wonder, how many of you thought that in ninety minutes, we were going to solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict?” I said with a grin. The room erupted in laughter. Of course no one thought that. “How about this then,” I said. “Can you tell me how the split between Palestinians—the split between Fatah and Hamas—how that has affected your life?” Fatah and Hamas were the two dueling political parties in Palestine. They hated each other as much or more than they hated Israelis. Again, the room was filled with depressing stories—stories of villages and families torn apart, hatred of their own kind, the inability to project a united strong front to Israelis. The civil war happening underneath the bigger war—the war in the community—had pushed them even further away from peace. “Do you think, in the next ninety or so minutes, we can solve the Fatah-Hamas rift?” Again, there was laughter. One man commented that between the two, peace between Muslims and Jews was easier than between Fatah and Hamas. “Tell me about Ramallah,” I continued. “You are all living here in this city. How has the conflict affected everyday life in Ramallah?” The situation, believe it or not, became direr as they recounted the day-to-day struggles of living. Poverty was

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widespread. Educational institutions were poor. More and more people were turning to radical philosophies to make some sort of meaning out of the madness. Their children, especially, were bearing the brunt of the conflict. “You know what I’m going to ask next,” I said with a chuckle. They laughed harder and didn’t even wait for me to ask. “No, we aren’t solving the problems in Ramallah today.” “I think you are right,” I said, relieved. “What about your families? Your families specifically? How has all of this—the problems with Israelis, with Fatah-Hamas, and in Ramallah—affected you as fathers and husbands?” There was a long pause. The men’s eyes were focused on the ground. One-by-one these men talked about difficult marriages, problems with kids, long nights where they wondered how they were going to provide a bright future for their family. There was so much pain in the room. I’m always struck by how much pain there is in the room. “We may not be able to fix the Israel-Palestine conflict today. Nor will be able to make a dent in the Fatah-Hamas one. Even the problems in Ramallah seem foreboding right now. But our homes, do you think there’s something we could do, today, to influence peace in our homes?” Now, on most days, I could expect that the answer to this would be something along the lines of “Not until my wife changes!” or “Not until my kids start respecting me!” But that wasn’t the case this day. These men were desperate to do something—anything—to make the world they lived in a little better for their families. They wanted to do something. They wanted to turn first.

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And in that moment of deep reflection, so did I. Some relationships in my life weren’t right either. How could I ask for changes from others that I wasn’t willing to make myself? We spent the next hour talking about everything we’ve discussed in this book: our fear of conflict, the difference between seeing people as people and seeing them as objects and what that looked like at home. We talked about collusion and conflict escalation. We talked about the type of reconnection and reconciliation that happens when we let go of our justifications and reach out, with dangerous love, to those we are in conflict with. We told stories of wayward children and how we had messed them up. We waxed on about our mistakes. We refused to cede responsibility for them to the circumstances or people who invited us to make those mistakes. We spoke of dangerous love. An hour later, all of us had resolved to turn first, to love more dangerously. As the workshop ended, we exchanged hugs. One by one the participants came up to me expressing a desire to both learn and do more. But also, a bit of fear: “What if it doesn’t work?” “What if it doesn’t last?” “What if my family (or friends or coworkers or neighbors) doesn’t respond?” Those are questions I’ve faced at every workshop I’ve ever given.

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CHAPTER 21

TROUBLESHOOTING DANGEROUS LOVE To have faith requires courage, the ability to take a risk, the readiness even to accept pain and disappointment. Whoever insists on safety and security as primary conditions of life cannot have faith; whoever shuts himself off in a system of defense, where distance and possession are his means of security, makes himself a prisoner. To be loved, and to love, need courage, the courage to judge certain values as of ultimate concern—and to take the jump and to stake everything on these values. — ERICH FR OMM

As you get to the end of the book, you may be asking yourself the same questions I get virtually every time I speak on dangerous love: “What if it doesn’t work?” “What if it doesn’t last?” “What if my family (or friends or coworkers or neighbors) doesn’t respond?” Here are my honest responses, to others and to you.

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It Might Not Work It might not work if by “work” you mean that others change too. Dangerous love is the sort of love that doesn’t seek a reward. It has no conditions. It seeks to understand as a way to be understood. It recognizes that while we can see everyone as a person, we are not all the same. Differences in the way we see the world and how we want to live in it will still exist. But what it should do is provide space for the creativity to see and honor those differences in a way that allows us to come together to engage in collaborative problem-solving. One approach that I’ve found helpful is to try to build relationships with those we are in conflict such that we have a clear view of the motivators in their lives. For example, what motivates them to get up in the morning? What are their goals for the day? What are they trying to accomplish at home or at work? What are their fears? And what are their larger hopes and dreams? The deeper I understand the answers to these questions, the more understanding it creates about their choices and how I can help them honor them.

It Might Not Last It might not last; creating lasting change takes a deliberateness that we often apply to our work but not our relationships. And the deliberateness has nothing to do with behavioral rules. If our answer to making change last is a set of new rules that you and everyone else has to follow, we will eventually slide back into doing the right things the wrong way (which means that we are no longer doing the right things).

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What it takes is a commitment to being curious about people, even when they are being difficult. It takes a commitment to be less self-absorbed and more us-absorbed. It means not walking ahead or behind them but beside them, laboring with them in their challenges because we honestly want to help them along in their journey. We are open to their humanity, even when it feels more convenient to be closed to it. We are alive to all the pain that is in every room, not just our own, and recognize that people aren’t always their best selves when they’re feeling pain—even the selfinflicted kind. How do we make this part of who we are? One practice that I try to follow is to set up a personal accountability guide each month. I think about the relationships I’m trying to improve and maintain—both personally and professionally. I set small goals about actions I could take that would be helpful to them on a daily or weekly basis, depending on the relationship. Then I review my guide weekly to make sure that I’m being helpful to others. If I’m not, I start looking deeper at their goals, needs, and fears until I come up with something that would actually help. More importantly, a practice I try to follow every morning is to resolve to find at least one person whom I can help that day and then try to be sensitive to whatever feelings or promptings I might have as I encounter everyone from strangers to family. The goal every day is to follow those senses. I take stock at the end of the day. A good day is when I felt multiple senses of helpfulness throughout the day toward multiple people. Good days aren’t measured just by what I got done but also by how I saw the people around me. In the workplace, the Arbinger Institute has found ways to codify seeing people as Thous in both workplace culture and in workplace accountability reports. We not only talk

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about culture, but we measure it by how we see people—our customers, our coworkers, the people who report to us, and those whom we report to. Our job isn’t defined by just the tasks we have to perform but by how we are seeing people while we do those tasks. If part of workers’ quarterly or annual review assesses lived culture, the culture of the organization actually takes hold.1

Others Might Not See You as a Person Your family (or friends or coworkers or neighbors) might not respond by seeing you as a person, especially if whatever you are doing is really about changing them. They too have the choice to see you as a person or an object. In those moments where they don’t respond, it’s important to understand that I’m turning first not because I want a particular result from them; I’m doing it because I want a particular result from me. I want to better see them and be better for them, even if they can’t do that for me. Sometimes in class I do an exercise where I invite a student to come up in front of the class and stand back to back with me. While we are standing back to back, I elbow the student a few times, and pretty soon the student starts elbowing me back. I then ask the class what is going on. Pretty quickly they see that we can’t see each other, but we can feel each other. Then I ask the student whom I’m standing back to back with to start seeing me as a person, to start applying some dangerous love. The student almost always moves around to try to get in front of me. And I always move away, keeping my back to him. The class starts laughing. The student gets frustrated, and eventually he tries to grab me and force me to stand face to face with him. I simply shut my eyes.

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When the laughing dies down, I ask the student to go back to back with me again and try it again. He usually gets it right this time. He just turns around. Now he is looking at my back. He is no longer forcing me to see him. He is focused only on seeing me. No matter how many times I do the exercise, it always has a similar effect on me. Just knowing that the student is staring at me, and I can’t see him, invites me to turn. But even if I never turn, it will never take away the rightness of what he is doing. And if, in frustration, he grows tired of staring at my back and turns back to back and starts elbowing me again, the chances of my turning toward him go down, not up. Sometimes all we can do is turn. When we do so and others don’t turn toward us, we demonstrate the most dangerous sort of love. We feel vulnerable, even hurt. But at least we are seeing. There is peace in that. I can’t promise you anything but this: while dangerous love may not work in changing the way others see you, it will always work in changing the way you and I see and ultimately treat others. And that, in itself, will save you and me. We love dangerously, regardless of how others see us, because it is the right thing to do, because it is the truth, because they are people. And when we do it for those reasons, it will be a powerful influence on others to see us for who we really are. At the end of the day, what I have learned in over a decade of being a peacebuilder is that there is no big in peace, just small. Peace is not made by treaties or by the judgments of laws—though they can help. Peace is made in every moment when I choose to see the truth instead of a lie, the moment I embrace your humanity and mine. While the

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process may end with nations and communities, it doesn’t start there. That moment with those Palestinian government officials reminded me of an old Chinese proverb: “If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person. If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.” Put another way, in the language of the faith that I hold dear, it is by the small and simple things that great things come to pass.2 It is a lesson I have had to learn over and over again on this journey.

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CHAPTER 22

CHOOSING LOVE OVER FEAR Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity. — CHIMAMAN DA N GOZI ADICHIE

“I’m calling about your father,” a nurse from the Veterans’ hospital my father was staying in said with obvious strain in her voice. “He’s refusing to eat. He wants to die. What do you want us do?” My dad and I were once best friends. We loved the same cars—vintage Mustangs were at the top of the list. We laughed at the same jokes—especially the ones delivered by Bill Murray. We even craved the same food—fried rice and cheesecake, though never together. We even looked like identical twins in photographs from our childhood. However, a stint in Vietnam wreaked havoc on my father’s health. Shortly after returning home from the war, he began getting sick. First, he started losing his balance.

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Then his speech began to slur. He had horrible leg cramps and horrific nightmares. Within a few years, he’d be relegated to a wheelchair. After years of visiting specialists, doctors diagnosed him with spinocerebellar degeneration. There was no cure. Doctors knew very little about the disease. It would take his life, they said; they just weren’t sure when. Devastated, my father left our family when I was ten years old. I remember the night vividly. He had just gotten home from a father-son camp with my brother. I heard shouting coming from my parents’ bedroom. My bedroom door flew open. My father, in tears, took off his gold watch, handed it to me, and then said goodbye. I loved that watch. I used to beg him to let me wear it. But on this night, I was terrified of it. He walked out the front door. My best friend was gone. I never wore that watch, or any other, again. My father traveled the country for what felt like an eternity. No one heard from him. And then one day I received a letter from him. He was in St. George, Utah. He told me about a movie he had seen, and how he had changed his life for the better. And then he told me he missed me and wanted to come home. I decided immediately I wanted, more than anything else, to have him back in my life. By the time he found his way back to us, my mother had remarried. He moved in with his mother. Our relationship slowly rekindled. By the time I graduated from high school, our friendship was as strong as ever. As time wore on, my father got sicker and sicker. Eventually, my grandmother passed away. My father tried to take care of himself, and with the help of his two older sisters, he lived a passable existence. But eventually, he could do little for himself. He refused to leave the house or let us

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come over and see him. His leg cramps got worse and worse until he could sleep only one to two hours a night. Very early one morning, during a terrible rainstorm, he called me. His voice was trembling. “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice cracking. “I just can’t take the pain anymore. Please let me go. But please, don’t let me die alone.” He had swallowed all the pills from a large bottle of Tylenol. He was ending his life. He asked me if I could come to his apartment and be by his side when he died. I panicked and called 911. I sped to his house like a NASCAR driver in the pouring rain. By the time I arrived at Dad’s apartment, the paramedics were already there. They had broken down his door. He was on a stretcher, getting loaded onto an ambulance, when I arrived. He looked at me with a pang of disappointment and simply said, “You betrayed me. I hate you.” His words crushed me. I followed him to the hospital. The doctors made him throw up the pills and luckily, he survived. His doctor said my father no longer could make decisions for himself and shouldn’t be living on his own. I had my father’s power of attorney. I was asked what I wanted to do with him. I was hurt, angry, fed up. My brother, sister, and I decided that the best option for him was a veterans’ nursing home. He could get warm showers, good meals, and physical therapy and be around the group of people he loved the most—other veterans. My father hated the idea. When we wheeled him into the new facility he told me again, “I hate you. Don’t come back.” However, I was stubborn. I became determined to not only come back but come back every day. Most days I would sit and talk my dad’s ear off. He never said anything back.

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Over time, the everyday visits became every week. Then the every week visits became every month. A short time later I moved to Connecticut. For several years we barely spoke. One day, several years later, I got a call from the head nurse at the veterans’ hospital: “I’m calling about your father,” she said with obvious strain in her voice. “He’s refusing to eat. He wants to die. What do you want us to do?” My father had decided to quit eating. He was starving himself to death. I asked the nurse for our options. Either let him starve or stick a feeding tube down his throat were the two she suggested. Both options were deplorable. I told the nurse I’d be on the next plane. As I flew back to the VA hospital, I began getting angrier and angrier. Why was my father doing this? I was convinced that he was testing me. A battle of wills was coming, and I became more and more determined to win. My brother picked me up at the airport, and by the time we arrived at the hospital, I was in a rage. I hadn’t seen my father in years. When I walked into his room, I was shocked at what I saw. My once smiling, robust father was hunched over in a wheelchair. He was pale and skeletal. The shock wore off too fast. I was undeterred. “Why are you doing this?” I said in a raised voice. My father was so weak, he could barely lift his head. He sat, slumped in his wheelchair and did not answer. “You are acting like a spoiled child! Why can’t you be grateful for what you have?” He said nothing in return. I tried several more times to get a rise out of him. He wouldn’t respond. Finally, in a moment of pure anger, I said, “Fine. Here’s the deal. You have until tomorrow morning to start eating. If you refuse, I will have the nurses strap you to this bed

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and they will stick a feeding tube down your throat. Do you want that?” That provoked a response. My father threatened to cut me and my brother and sister off permanently if we interfered. I was up for the fight. That night I went back to my brother’s house. I couldn’t eat. I was sick. My brother mentioned that he had a few boxes of my father’s things down in the basement. “I think most of it is junk,” he said. “But there might be something in there you’d like to have.” I went to the basement and began digging. Most of the stuff was catalogs. Underneath all the junk I found a brown vinyl three-ring binder. I picked it up and a picture fell out. The picture was in black and white. It showed a young boy, around eight years old, jumping over hurdles. The boy had a smile on his face. He looked just like me. I had never seen my father run before, let alone jump hurdles. As I stared at the picture my heart was filled with hope and compassion. In a single moment, my heart had moved from a state of war to a state of love toward this man. I opened the binder and began reading what was a meticulously typed journal from the time he left our family until a few years ago. As I read it, I got a glimpse of a tortured man. My father once was young and athletic. He had a bright mind, was great with numbers, and was a sharp dresser. He loved sports cars and playing basketball. Now he was largely irrelevant. He wrote that the toughest part about being disabled wasn’t the stares. Most people were too polite to stare. What killed him was the lack of eye contact. When someone would push him around the mall in his wheelchair, no one would look at him. He would talk to a store clerk and the

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clerk would look the other way. He wrote about how lonely that felt, how much he missed the lack of human connection. My father was a religious man. He begged for God to heal him. He promised that he’d serve God the rest of his life. He’d pleaded and begged and bargained. The healing never came. His life was full of regrets: a marriage and family lost, opportunities squandered by self-pity, a lack of faith at a time when he was sure that his faith was being tested. His pain was unbearable for any man—yet he bore it for more years than I could have. I sat on the cold concrete basement floor and wept for an hour. The more I pondered his life, the more I could see his pain and humanity.

Peanut Butter and Jelly for Peace One particular memory of my father surfaced as I sat on the basement floor. My senior year of high school I began the college application process. My dream was to go to film school. I wanted to be the next George Lucas. The only problem with that dream was that I couldn’t afford it. My family didn’t have much money, and going to film school was going to be expensive. The good news, my high school counselor told me, was that my father’s status as a disabled veteran would give me access to government scholarships that could pay my way through school. I told everyone in the dinky suburb of Raytown that I grew up in that I was leaving dumpy Kansas City behind and heading off to Hollywood. But a few months later, reality shot my dreams out of the sky. I received a letter telling me that my application for financial aid had been denied.

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It took weeks of investigation, including a call to my congressman, to find out the reason. Unbeknownst to anyone else in the family, my father had written to the Veterans Administration a year prior, asking that all his benefits be terminated. In his letter, he said he believed that his physical disability began before he joined the army. He felt he didn’t deserve the money and asked the government to quit paying him benefits. He never told a soul. I was furious. I drove to my father’s tiny apartment and unleashed a torrent of complaints upon him. He stayed calm. He tried to explain to me that declining the benefits was the moral thing to do. I would have none of it. I kept pressuring him to write another letter and ask for them to be reinstated. He refused. “But I won’t be able to go to film school,” I tearfully pled to my father. “I may not even be able to go to college now. And even if I can afford to get into school somewhere, I’ll have to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day.” I was laying down the gauntlet. I hated few things in life more than peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. “I’m so sorry, Son,” he said. “I know how much this means to you. It hurts me to have to do this to you. But it would hurt you and me more if we took money we didn’t deserve.” My father’s high-mindedness meant little to me. With no other recourse available to me, I gave up my film school dream and decided to attend a safety school that offered a scholarship. My dream of being the next George Lucas was over. I vowed never to speak to my father again. My mother, however, had different plans. The week I was leaving home for college, she implored me to go to my

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father and make amends. She had been speaking with him, and he desperately wanted to see me before I left. I drove to his apartment and used the key under the doormat to get in. What I saw, when I walked inside his apartment, shocked me. Most of his furniture had disappeared. There was no television. Even his beloved typewriter was missing. Almost everything in the apartment was gone. I immediately feared that someone had broken into the house and stolen everything of value from him. He quickly assured me that he was all right. He reached into his front pocket and pulled out an envelope. Then he explained. “I know how much I hurt you,” he said with tears in his eyes. “There’s nothing more hurtful to a father than to know he let down his son. I know you aren’t going to the school you wanted to go to, and I know how little money you have. So, I sold everything I could. Here is all the money I could scrape up. I know it’s not much, but it’s yours.” He handed me the envelope. A few hundred dollar bills were inside. I was still angry. “Dad, you have no idea how expensive college is. This money won’t make a difference. You shouldn’t have sold your things.” He kept looking me in the eye, smiling. “There’s one more thing,” he said. “You said that you’d have to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches every day when you went to school. I want you to know that if that’s what you have to eat, then that’s what I’ll eat too.” He gestured to his refrigerator. I opened it. There, inside, were several loaves of bread and jars of peanut butter and grape jelly—nothing else.

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“I can’t alleviate the suffering you are going through right now, Son,” he said. “I’m sorry. It’s important for me to always do what I believe to be right. I believe, deep down, that’s important to you too. I can’t help you with your scholarships, but I can join you in that suffering the best I can. As long as you are suffering, so will I.” That was my father—caring, compassionate, forgiving, a man of high ideals, a man willing to create whatever space was needed to invite reconciliation. We choked down a peanut butter and jelly sandwich together and I walked out of his apartment hoping that someday I could grow up to be the great man he was. That was dangerous love.

A Day of Atonement This was the man I was fighting with—this kind, generous, suffering, selfless man. How could I be so blind? I began to be filled with a deep desire to reconnect—to kneel down in front of him and beg for forgiveness. One question dominated my every thought. “How can I make this right?” I needed him and his forgiveness. But the love that was swelling in my heart was quickly becoming replaced with fear. “How will he react? He hates me. He’ll spit in my face and then I’ll watch him starve to death.” I spent the night in agony, searching for the courage to do what I knew I had to do. I had to love him, no matter what he decided. I had to turn first. In the morning I made the long trip back to the hospital. Just a day before I had arrived in a rage. Today that rage was replaced with remorse, humility, and dangerous love. I spotted him in the same place I had left him. His head was drooped down, his body lifeless-looking. I knelt down in front of him and took his hands in mine.

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Before I could speak, tears began streaming down my face. “Dad, it’s Chad,” I said, my voice breaking. “I’m so sorry. I’ve hurt you terribly.” My body was shaking, and it became difficult to speak. “I have been a bad son. I didn’t love you the way you needed to be loved. I didn’t understand your pain. I’ve wasted years letting my own selfishness blind me from the truth. I have loved you wrong. “Forgive me. You are my father and I will love you no matter what. If you choose to quit eating, I will stay here, holding your hand until you pass on. I want you to live. But more than that, I want you to know that I will always love you.” My father was silent. His head was down and he was still refusing to make eye contact. Tears were streaming down his face as well. As the seconds passed, my heart became afraid. “Is he ignoring me? Is he really going to kill himself?” Then he started hollering for the nurse. He kept barking for her over and over again. I was upset. I was sure he was calling her to have me thrown out. “Dad, please don’t do this. I love you. Don’t kick me out. Don’t do this, Dad!” The nurse arrived in a hurry. “What is it, Carl? What’s wrong?” For the first time that day, my father lifted his head. He looked at the nurse and then said simply, “Bring me a cheeseburger!” Then his eyes caught mine. There was a sparkle there that I hadn’t seen in years. I collapsed. Tears of pain quickly morphed into tears of joy.

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I said to the nurse, “Forget about the cheeseburger. What my father really loves is steak.” I called my family and told them to come to the hospital. That afternoon, my dad, my brother, my sister, and I all sat together, eating a steak feast. We talked about the good times and forgot about the bad. We laughed. We cried a little. Most importantly, we loved. A year later, shortly after I moved to Hawaii, the same nurse called me again. Her voice was hushed and somber. “Carl has pneumonia,” she said. “His lungs are filled with fluid. There isn’t much we can do. You need to get here to say goodbye.” I rushed to the airport and then sat through a torturous flight. I prayed that I’d get to see him and tell him I loved him one last time. I arrived at the airport and was picked up by one of his closest friends. We sped through town and I rushed up the stairs of the hospital to his side. My father was weak, barely conscious. It took several minutes to rouse him. When he awoke, he smiled weakly and clasped my hand. He asked me softly, “What took you so long?” and then smiled again. He whispered that he loved me. I told him I loved him. He didn’t pass away, however. He kept hanging on. He lost consciousness for the next twelve hours but refused to die. Every breath he took was a tortured one. The doctors were baffled. Why wouldn’t he pass? The next day, after everyone else went home to shower, my father squeezed my hand, opened his eyes, looked at me, and whispered, “I’m scared. I’ve made so many mistakes in my life. I’ve hurt so many people. I’m not sure God wants me back.” My father was afraid to pass on, afraid that the mistakes that he had made in his life would lead to rejection in the next life.

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I told him, “Don’t be afraid, Dad.” He held my hand and could barely utter the word “Blessing.” In my faith, oftentimes loved ones will give a blessing of comfort and healing in times of illness or distress. I had given blessings many times to my sick children and even occasionally to strangers. I had never given one to my father. I knew it was the most important one I’d ever give. I laid my hands on his head and was overcome by the most overwhelming feeling I’ve ever experienced in my life. No words can describe what I saw or felt in that moment. All I remember was light—beautiful, powerful light flooding my mind, surging its way through my body, rushing to my heart. That power made its way through every limb and then eventually out of my hands and onto him. I kept mumbling over and over, “I had no idea. I had no idea. I had no idea what it means to really, really love.” Then the words came. “Dad, you are loved more than you have ever known. It’s time to come home.” The blessing ended. Fifteen minutes later I held my father’s hand as he slipped away. As he took his last breath, a single tear rolled down his face. All life must end someday, but I learned in that moment, love has no end.

Loving Dangerously I often think back to that night on my brother’s basement floor: the picture of my father running the hurdles, a desperate man’s journal and his decision to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, how dangerous love saved my life. I managed to transform my fear of conflict and my father and gather the courage to turn first. That turn was so powerful, my father turned too. Had the cycle continued, I wouldn’t have been by his bedside the second time. I would

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have lost the precious chance to hold his hand in peace and say goodbye. My life would have been tinged with pain, regret, and uncertainty. Dangerous love transformed the conflict between a self-deceived son and a hurting father. It can help transform your conflicts too. Dangerous love is scary. It is hard. Casualties will occur. People may not respond to your efforts as soon as you want them to. They may not choose, as my father did, to start eating again. If they don’t change—there will be pain, serious pain. But consider the alternative: years of avoiding or managing conflict, running from your fear of conflict and the people you are in conflict with, a life spent nurturing your own self-deception just so that you can feel better about your conflicts, collusion after collusion where you blame others for hurting you and they blame you for hurting them. Is any justification, no matter how potent, worth that? For those still clinging to some sort of self-defeating justification that says, “Well you and the people you wrote about in your book can do it, but I can’t,” yes, you can. Remember what we’ve discussed in this book: • Let go of your fear of conflict. Conflict doesn’t have to be smog; it can be a cocoon. Beauty can emerge from the most dangerous conflict. You will emerge from this conflict stronger and happier and a better partner, parent, or coworker if you let go of the smog view. • Let go of the fear of the person you are in conflict with. Avoiding, accommodating, and competing aren’t the only options available to you. People have an innate ability to collaboratively engage in problem-solving when they see the humanity of the people they are in conflict with.

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• Turn first. For dangerous love to work, you have to be the first to turn. You turn by first letting go of your fear of conflict and then letting go of your fear of others in the conflict. Then you use truth, mercy, justice, and peace to create the space to invite others to turn. • Invite them to turn. It might take weeks or months or years. But if you really want others to turn, then the only way is to turn first. Dangerous love is the most powerful invitation there is to invite reconciliation with the people we are in conflict with. Remember, it’s by the small and simple things that great things come. You can do this—for you, for the people in your family, office, and community. Open your eyes and heart to the people in your life you cannot or will not see. Choose dangerous love over fear. It might not change the world. But it will change yours.

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NOTES Introduction 1.

“Marriage and Couples,” Gottman Institute, accessed November 11, 2019, https://www.gottman.com/about/research/couples/. 2.. David F. Larcker et al., 2013 Executive Coaching Survey, Miles Group and Stanford University, August 2013, https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/ publications/2013-executive-coaching-survey. 3.. Lee Rainie, Scott Keeter, and Andrew Perrin, “Trust and Distrust in America,” Pew Research Center, July 22, 2019, https://www.peoplepress.org/2019/07/22/trust-and-distrust-in-america/. 4.. The two questions are paraphases of questions asked by Martin Luther King, Jr., “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” at Bishop Charles Mason Temple, https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/ documents/ive-been-mountaintop-address-delivered-bishop-charlesmason-temple (accessed Nov 11, 2019)

Chapter 1 1.

Arbinger Institute, Leadership and Self Deception: Getting Out of the Box, 3rd ed. (Oakland: Berrett-Koehler, 2018), 42–50. 2. Arbinger Institute, The Outward Mindset: Seeing beyond Ourselves (Oakland: Berrett-Koehler, 2016), 25. 3. Arbinger, Outward Mindset, 25. 4. Arbinger, Outward Mindset, 104. 5. Arbinger, Leadership and Self-Deception, 94–95. 6. “They say, ‘means are after all means.’ I would say, ‘means are after all everything’. As the means so the end. . . . There is no wall of separation between the means and the end.” Mahatma Gandhi, Young India, 1927, 236–7.

Chapter 3 1.

Hermann Nabi et al., “Increased Risk of Coronary Heart Disease among Individuals Reporting Adverse Impact of Stress on Their

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Notes

Health: The Whitehall II Prospective Cohort Study,” European Heart Journal 34, no. 34 (September 7, 2013): 2697–2705, https:// doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/eht216. 2. European Society of Cardiology, “People’s Perception of the Effect of Stress on Their Health Is Linked to Risk of Heart Attacks,” press release, June 27, 2013, https://www.escardio.org/The-ESC/Press Office/Press-releases/People-s-perception-of-the-effect-of-stress-on -their-health-is-linked-to-risk-of. 3. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: Harper Perennial, 2008), 16–22. 4. C. R. Mitchell, The Structure of International Conflict (New York: St. Martin’s, 2001), 155–56. 5. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, 8–16. 6. Robert A. Baruch Bush and Joseph P. Folger, The Promise of Mediation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005), 49–59.

Chap ter 4 1. Csikszentmihalyi, Flow, 2. 2. I love this quote from yoga practitioner Stephen Cope: “Through practice, I’ve come to see that the deepest source of my misery is not wanting things to be the way they are. Not wanting myself to be the way I am. Not wanting the world to be the way it is. Not wanting others to be the way they are. Whenever I’m suffering, I find this ‘war with reality’ to be at the heart of the problem.” Stephen Cope, Will Yoga & Meditation Really Change My Life: Personal Stories from 25 of North America’s Leading Teachers (North Adams. MA: Storey, 2003), 291.

Chap ter 5 1.

Dean G. Pruitt and Sung Hee Kim, Social Conflict: Escalation, Stalemate, and Settlement, 3rd ed. (Boston: McGraw Hill, 2004), 40–47. 2. In The Anatomy of Peace these are referred to as “Better Than” and “I Deserve” boxes. See Arbinger Institute, The Anatomy of Peace: Resolving the Heart of Conflict, 2nd ed. (Oakland: Berrett-Koehler, 2015), 108–16. 3. The Anatomy of Peace refers to these styles as “Worse Than” and “Need-to-Be-Seen-As.” See Arbinger, 117–25. 4. Vamik Volkan, Blind Trust: Large Groups and Their Leaders in Times of Crisis and Terror (Charlottesville, VA: Pitchstone, 2004), 56–87.

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Notes 5.

6.

7.

8.

221

The Office, season 2, ep. 21, “Conflict Resolution” (clip), aired May 4, 2006, on NBC, https://www.nbc.com/the-office/video /conflict-resolution/3839886. Roger Fisher and William Ury, Getting to Yes Negotiating Agreement without Giving In, 2nd ed. (New York: Penguin, 1991), 40–55. Joseph P. Folger, Marshall Scott Poole, and Randall K. Stutman, Working through Conflict: Strategies for Relationships, Groups, and Organizations, 7th ed. (Boston: Pearson, 2013), 119–20. William Ury, Getting to Yes with Yourself: How to Get What You Truly Want (New York: HarperOne, 2016), 4.

Chapter 6 1.

2.

3.

4. 5.

Philosopher Terry Warner, whom we will discuss in much greater length in the next chapter, wrote his first draft of his work calling it “Bonds of Anguish, Bonds of Love” before ultimately titling it The Bonds That Make Us Free. He was on to something. Mohammed Abu-Nimer, “Toward the Theory and Practice of Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding,” in Positive Approaches to Peacebuilding, ed. Cynthias Sampson et al. (Chagrin Falls, OH: Taos Institute, 2010), 13–22. John Paul Lederach, Building Peace: Sustainable Reconciliation in Divided Societies (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace, 1997), 23–35. Lederach, 23–25. Jayne Seminare Docherty, Learning Lessons from Waco: When the Parties Bring Their Gods to the Table (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2001), 18–35.

Chapter 7 1. Pruitt and Kim, Social Conflict, 108, 134–35. 2. Pruitt and Kim, 108, 134–35. 3. Arbinger, Leadership and Self-Deception, 17. 4. Arbinger, 17. 5. Martin Buber, I and Thou (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino, 2010). 6. Buber.

Chapter 8 1.

Kenneth Cloke, Mediating Dangerously: The Frontiers of Conflict Resolution (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 10. 2. Arbinger, Outward Mindset, 29–31.

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Chapter 9 1. Arbinger, Anatomy of Peace, 67.

Chapter 10 1. Arbinger, Anatomy of Peace, 117–25. 2. Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (but Not By Me), 2nd ed. (Boston: Mariner, 2015), 13–51. 3. Tavris and Aronson, 13–51. 4. Tavris an Aronson, 126–40.

Chapter 11 1.

2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

C. Terry Warner, The Bonds That Makes Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves (Salt Lake City: Shadow Mountain, 2001), 83–100. Also see Arbinger, Anatomy of Peace, 38–55. The questions I’m asking in this section are adapted from the questions asked in Arbinger, Leadership and Self-Deception, 93–107. See Pruitt and Kim, Social Conflict, 89–91. Pruitt and Kim, 92–98. See Pruitt and Kim, 92–98, for an in-depth explanation of both models. Pruitt and Kim, 92–98. Pruitt and Kim, 99. See Pruitt and Kim, 101–20, for a variation on the conflict spiral called the Structural Change Model. The model talks about psychological changes that happen in the parties in conflict that propel conflict forward, encouraging it to persist, reoccur, or both. Arbinger Institute, The Choice (Arbinger Institute, 2014), 44–45.

Chapter 12 1. Arbinger, Anatomy of Peace, 52–57. 2. John Winslade and Gerald Monk, Narrative Mediation: A New Approach to Conflict Resolution (Oakland: Jossey-Bass, 2001), 57–92. 3. This realization was a painful one and inspired me to reach out to Raul and apologize for the damage I caused him and his family. Raul had carried that hurt deeply for years. Dangerous love, especially after we have caused pain in others, hurts.

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Notes 4.

5.

223

Dennis Ross, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 770–71. Ross, 770–71.

Chapter 13 1. Arbinger, Leadership and Self-Deception, 133–40. 2. Arbinger, Anatomy of Peace, 122–25. 3. Pruitt and Kim, Social Conflict, 181–82. 4. Docherty, Learning Lessons, 28. 5. Ifat Maoz, “An Experiment in Peace: Reconciliation-Aimed Workshops of Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian Youth,” Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 6 (2000): 721–22. 6. Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free, 208–9. 7. John Paul Lederach, The Moral Imagination: The Art and Soul of Building Peace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 42.

Chapter 15 1.

The song “Kumbaya” has a fascinating history. See Jeffrey Weiss, “How Did ‘Kumbaya’ Become a Mocking Metaphor?” Dallas Morning News, November 12, 2006, http://web.archive.org /web/20080914095037/http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent /dws/dn/religion/stories/DN-kumbaya_11rel.ART0.State .Edition1.3e6da2d.html. 2. Arbinger, Anatomy of Peace, 30–39. 3. King, Strength to Love, 45. 4. King, 51. 5. Lederach, Moral Imagination, ix. 6. Warner, Bonds That Make Us Free, 129–47. 7. Johan Galtung, “Cultural Violence,” Journal of Peace Research 27, no. 3 (August 1990): 291–305. 8. Galtung, 291. 9. Brené Brown, Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts (New York: Random House, 2018), 186. 10. Brown, 185–91. 11. Brown, 193.

Chapter 16 1.

Antjie Krog, Country of My Skull; Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa (New York: Crown, 1999), 210.

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Notes

2.

Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness (New York: Image, 1999), 31. 3. Tutu, 54–55. 4. Lederach, Building Peace, 31.

Chap ter 17 1. Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness, 270–73. 2. Pub. L. No. 103-150, 107 Stat. 1510 (1993). 3. Ellis Cose, Bone to Pick: Of Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Reparation, and Revenge (New York: Washington Square, 2005), 131.

Chap ter 18 1.

Carolyn Nordstrom, A Different Kind of War Story (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 210. 2. Nordstrom, 215. 3. Nordstrom, 218. 4. Nordstrom, v. 5. Galtung, “Cultural Violence,” 302. 6. Arbinger, Anatomy of Peace, 207–20.

Chap ter 19 1. Lederach, Building Peace, 76–77. 2. Oren Lyons, “A Warrior in Two Worlds: The Life of Ely Parker,” PBS, https://www.pbs.org/warrior/content/timeline/opendoor /roleOfChief.html. 3. Sharon went on to serve as a military policewoman in the Israeli army. After two years of service, she came back to PeacePlayers and is now coaching several teams in Jerusalem.

Chap ter 20 1.

Academy of Achievement, “Archbishop Desmond Tutu,” June 12, 2004, https://www.achievement.org/achiever/desmond-tutu/#interview.

1.

Kimberly White, The Shift: How Seeing People Changes Everything (Oakland: Berrett-Kohler, 2018). The Shift is an excellent case study of seeing people as people in the workplace. Book of Mormon, Alma 37:6.

Chap ter 21

2.

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LIST OF STORIES Chapter 1 • Miriam is in conflict with Mahmoud over the use of his gym.

Chapter 2 • A student sees conflict as smog.

Chapter 3 • A student sees conflict as a cocoon.

Chapter 4 • A ballistic missile is reported to be heading to Hawaii.

Chapter 5 • Chad asks his professor for advice. • A man weed whacks a garden.

Chapter 6 • Chad and his daughter tussle over her dating at the age of fifteen.

Chapter 7 • Jennifer and Hirota have marital trouble.

Chapter 8 • High performance athletes believe seeing everyone as Its is the key to their success.

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List of Stories

Chapter 9 • Chad forces his family to go to the beach with him to complete a class assignment.

Chapter 10 • Chad thinks everyone in his life is self-deceived but him.

Chapter 11 • Chuck and Chad square off in the office over a generational work conflict.

Chapter 12 • Chad becomes an ally to Raul and causes even more damage to Raul’s struggling marriage.

Chapter 13 • Chad buys an ugly tie for his sadistic math teacher.

Chapter 14 • A group of employees with terrible customer service ratings go through the open/closed exercise.

Chapter 15 • Amir is worried that practicing dangerous love will allow Israelis to take advantage of his family.

Chapter 16 • Bishop Desmond Tutu reconciles with his enemy, F. W. de Klerk.

Chapter 17 • Restorative justice work in New Zealand asks a critical question of both victim and victimizer. • Bishop Tutu struggles to persuade other countries to follow the example of South Africa and forgive.

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List of Stories



227

• After his son has his bike stolen, Chad teaches him a lesson in justice.

Chapter 18 • Phillip resists the urge to go to war when he’s called a liar by his stepson’s father. • Healers in Mozambique scrape the violence off people at the end of a civil war.

Chapter 19 • Ibrahim doesn’t believe in the word peace. • A group of Palestinian and Israeli young women reconcile through the game of basketball.

Chapter 20 • Chad struggles to believe he can live the principles of dangerous love when his life comes apart. • A group of Palestinian leaders find an unexpected path to reconciliation after failing to fix the IsraeliPalestinian conflict.

Chapter 22 • Chad struggles to practice dangerous love with his father who is refusing to eat.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Dangerous Love took five years to write with countless revisions, twists, and turns. I lost faith in this project too many times to count. I am deeply grateful for the influence that each of these people had on both me and the book. Each of their contributions changed me and the book for the better. I could not and would not have done it without you.

Team McKay Cen t e r David Whippy, Shemaina Maeve, Seamus Fitzgerald, Kim Makekau, Michael Ligaliga, David Pulsipher, Phillip McArthur, Boyd Timothy, Kathy Ward, and Michelle Campbell all provided support, insight, and much needed wisdom toward both the ideas and the form the book would take. You are the best people I know.

Team F ield Direct o rs Sophia Hutchison, T. K. Ford, Carla Rada Prudencio, Zach Tilton, Julie Hawke, Chris Pineda, Chamberlain McCracken, Eric Hachenberger, Caitlyn Nalder, Sabrina Domrique, Ramzi Dosch, Reka Bordas, Katie Searle, and Isabella Bigley all provided inspiration, insightful feedback, and support as I labored through this project the past few years. The best students are the ones who end up teaching you. Thank you for all you’ve done to teach me about peace.

Team Arbinge r Jim Ferrell, Terry Warner, Mitch Warner, John Cosgrove, Chris Wallace, Michael Lazan, Senthiyl S.S.G., Metta

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Acknowled gments

Villemos Ponty, Chip Huth, Jack Colwell, Cobus Pienaar, Jon Benfer, and Kasha Coombs. The principles at Arbinger opened my eyes. But it’s the people who create and lead at Arbinger who changed my heart.

Team PeacePlayers Brendan Tuohey; Sean Tuohey; Karen Doubilet; Samer Elayan; Jamie Asante-Asare; Gunnar Hagstrom; Joe Smith; Gareth Harper; Bryan Franklin; Mandy Murphy; Nasiphi Khafu; David Cassel; Jale Canlibalik; Haley Riley; Githa Cohen; Galit Sahar; Rebecca Ross; Rochelle Coleman; Brian Kriftcher; Ron Shapiro; John Vaske; R. C. Buford; and Matt Geshke, Jorge Casimiro, and Leah Brecunier at Nike; and the thousands of young men and women who have been the true inspiration for this book: Your stories, your courage, and your vision will someday change the world.

Team BK Steve Piersanti: Thank you for creating this wonderful company, believing in both me and the book, and patiently and expertly guiding Dangerous Love from a rough idea into a polished manuscript. Your hand is everywhere in the book, always for the better. Also a huge mahalo to the BK editorial staff, design and production staff, sales and marketing staff, international sales and subsidiary rights staff, and operations staff for their tremendous work on getting this book to the world.

Team Violet Digital Creat i ve Bailee Rasmussen: I’m indebted for all of your help creating websites, social media, marketing, and overall support of both the book and me. You have been brilliant.

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Acknowledgments

231

Team Family Makena, TK, Emmy Skye, Summer (Rabi), Aiko, Emi, Mika, Koji, Jeff, Heather, Ashley, Russ, Helen, Ernest, Kathy, Eliza, Dave, Hanatea, and Meilana: For all the sacrifices my kids and family made so that their dad, uncle, son, and son-inlaw could try to make the world a better place.

Team Amanda Amanda: I would never have been able to do this without you, without your seeing me, even in all my brokenness, in all my weakness and mistakes. I was so lost and you found me. And it’s that love that fueled this book to completion. Thank you for finding me, for teaching me how to love dangerously. I will love you that way too. Always, my love, my love, my love.

Team Mom Linda Lou: It takes a great parent, a great mother, to help a child embrace who he is and to focus his strengths toward the right things. I know that it wasn’t easy; that I lost my way at times. You cried and prayed over me. It was a thankless job. Thank you for helping me become whom I needed to be. Thank you for teaching me how to be generous, how to be a peacemaker, how to cultivate my talents. Thank you for teaching me that I should be unique, that I should stay idealistic. Thank you for nurturing every day, every crazy idea, and giving me the faith to believe that anything is possible.

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INDEX Page references followed by fig indicate an illustrated figure; those followed by t indicate a table. accommodation, 46fig, 47, 65 Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 205 alternative dispute resolution (ADR), 51 Amir’s story, 139–140 Anatomy of Peace, The (Arbinger Institute), 5, 83–84, 105fig, 109fig, 137 Angelou, Maya, 31 “Anthem” (Cohen), 173 apartheid (South Africa), 149–150 Arab Spring, 194 Arafat, Yasser, 112–113 Arbinger Institute Anatomy of Peace, The, 5, 83–84, 105fig, 109fig, 137 codifying seeing people as Thous, 201–202 collusion as defined by, 101, 109fig collusion exercise by, 113–115 on conflict spirals, 103 conflict transformation ideas of, 84 on “gathering allies,” 108 Leadership and Self-Deception, 5 Leadership Development Program (LDP) at, 185–190 Outward Mindset, The, 5 on seeing people instead of objects, 8 self-deception as defined by, 71 Aristotle, 136 athletes story, 75–76, 77–79 atonement and forgiveness story, 213–216 basketball program (PeacePlayers), 182–190 beach trip story, 85–89

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Bella’s story, 31–32, 33–34 blaming others “gathering allies” role in, 108–111 getting stuck in our conflict stories and, 28–29 Miriam and Mahmoud’s story on, 7–15, 15fig, 17–22, 27 self-deception and, 93 taking accountability instead of, 27 See also change Bone to Pick (Cose), 162–163 Book of Mormon, The, 191 Brown, Brené, 117, 145, 146 Buber, Martin, 72 Building Peace (Lederach), 180 Carrell, Steve, 49 Chananiah, Yehoshua ben, 177, 179 change belief that others must, 33, 35 dangerous love can change systemic conflicts, 142–146 easy love and, 3, 119–122 father’s story on dangerous love and, 205–217 in how we see others, 153 math teacher story on, 117–119 other tried-and-untrue methods of, 122–126 our conflict perception changes when we, 34 PeacePlayers’ basketball program promoting, 182–190 short-long way to, 179–180, 179fig your own world through dangerous love, 218 See also blaming others; conflict transformation

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INDEX

cheating boyfriend story, 85 Chuck and author’s story, 98–101, 104–106, 107–108, 109fig civil disobedience, 140 classroom “seeing” exercise, 202–203 Clinton, Bill, 160 closed approaches, 130–134 cocoon into butterfly metaphor, 31–32, 33–34, 36, 37 cocoon thinking conflict resolution as either smog or, 41, 51–53 daughter and boyfriend story, 55–60 description of, 36, 37 open to dangerous love with, 37 theory of the conflict with, 40 Cohen, Leonard, 173 collaborative problem-solving value, 147 collusion The Anatomy of Peace on, 105fig, 109fig Arbinger’s definition of, 101 becomes self-sustaining, 112–113 in conflict spiral, 100–106 “gathering allies,” 108, 109fig illustration of, 114fig collusion exercise, 113–115 communication method, 122, 124–126 competition, 45–47, 46fig, 65 See also forcing others compromising, 52fig conflict bridging the gap between love and fear in, 73, 75–81 contender-defender model of, 101–103 definition of, 1 how dangerous love changes, 3–5 open vs. closed approaches to, 130–134 as part of all relationships, 2 spiral model of, 103fig conflict avoidance, 41, 42–44, 43fig, 49, 65 conflict behaviors conflict avoidance, 41, 42–44, 43fig, 49, 65

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conflict management, 1–2, 41, 44–49, 65 conflict resolution, 41, 51–53, 66 conflict transformation, 41 five basic approaches to, 41 reconciliation, 41 conflict management accommodation approach to, 46fig, 47, 65 competition approach to, 45–47, 46fig, 65 constructive, 1 destructive, 1–2 Hawaiian garden story on, 44–45 limitations of, 47–49 smog approach of, 41, 49 conflict perceptions changes when we change, 34 conflict stories reinforcing negative, 26–29 getting stuck in negative, 28–30 metaphor exercise on our, 23–24 self-fulfilling prophecy of negative, 26 smog metaphor, 24–25, 29, 33, 34 that others must change, 33, 35 See also self-deception paradox conflict resolution can be either smog or cocoon paradigm, 41, 51–53 communication approaches to, 124–126 compromise for, 52fig conflict style exercise on, 66 as important CEO skill, 2 See also problem-solving; solutions conflict spiral model, 103fig conflict spirals, 98–115 conflict stories getting stuck in our, 28–30 how they reinforce negative conflict perception, 26–29 restorative justice demands sharing, 155–156 conflict styles exercise, 65–66 conflict transformation as constructive approach, 41 dangerous love as the key to, 3–5

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Index conflict transformation (continued) daughter and boyfriend story, 55–60 description and benefits of, 61–63 from destructive to constructive, 2 fear as barrier to, 3 looking for short cuts instead of, 127–128 math teacher story on, 117–119 moving toward reconciliation, 63–64 Phillip and Jackson’s story, 167–169 Ramallah workshop (West Bank) on, 194–198 smog perception that others must change for, 34 when the caterpillar changes into a butterfly, 34 See also change connections as either constructive or destructive ways, 78 as key to bridging gap between love and fear, 73 Mãori people (Aotearoa, or New Zealand) belief in, 76–77 See also relationships constructive conflict, 1, 2, 41 contender-defender model, 101–103, 102fig control over having happiness, 33 over how we perceive the world, 33–34 coping strategy, 122, 123 Cose, Ellis, 162–163 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 33 cultural-level peacemaking, 144–146, 171–172 cultural peace, 172fig cultural violence, 143, 144fig Curandeiros (Mozambique healers), 170–172 customer service survey story, 128–132 Cyprus UN peacekeeping, 48–49 dangerous love

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235

as being active, 141–142 bridging the conflict gap between fear and, 73, 75–81 can change the world, 142–146 can change your own world, 218 cocoon thinking to become open to, 37 father’s story on power of, 205–217 forces us to recognize our collusion, 104–105 it might not work or last, 200–202 as key to conflict transformation, 3–5 self-deception barrier to, 67 separation barrier to, 67 as small and simple things, 191–194, 204 three misconceptions about, 136–137 See also love dangerous love practice step 1: let go of our fear of conflict, 17–19, 34–36, 58, 58fig step 2: let go of our fear of people we are in conflict with, 19–20, 32, 58, 58fig step 3: I turn first, 20–21, 58, 58fig step 4: invite them to turn, 21–22, 58, 58fig See also specific step dangerous love values exercise, 146–148 Dare to Lead (Brown), 145, 146 daughter and boyfriend story, 55–60 de Klerk, F. W., 150, 181 destructive conflict, 1–2, 41 Different Kind of War Story, A (Nordstrom), 169–172 direct peace, 172fig direct violence, 143, 144fig easy love definition of, 3, 127 limitations of, 120–122 math teacher story on developing, 119–122 Eruvin 53b, 177

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236

INDEX

faith failing and losing, 191–193 regaining, 193–194 in small and simple things, 191–194, 204 Fatah (Palestinian political party), 196, 197 father’s story, 205–217 fear of appearing weak, 137 bridging the conflict gap between love and, 73, 75–81 as conflict transformation barrier, 3 false missile alert in Hawaii (2018), 35–36 letting go of our fear of conflict, 17–19, 34–36, 58, 58fig, 169, 216, 217 letting go of our fear of people in conflict with, 19–20, 58, 58fig, 169 finding mercy exercise, 164 forcing others, 122–123 See also competition forgiveness, 158–159, 213–216 See also mercy; reconciliation Frankl, Viktor, 167 Fromm, Eric, 199 Galtung, Johan, 142–145, 144fig, 172, 172fig Galtung’s peace triangle, 172, 172fig Galtung’s violence triangle, 143–145, 144fig, 172 Gandhi, Mahatma, 13, 23, 119 “gathering allies,” 108–111 Gbowee, Leymah, 107 Getting to Yes with Yourself (Ury), 52–53 Ginott, Haim, 91 Gottman, John, 2 Great Law of the Iroquois, 180 Greek–Turkish Cypriots conflict, 48–49 Hamas (Palestinian political party), 196, 197 happiness, 33 Hawaiian garden story, 44–45 Hawaiian sovereignty apology, 160–161

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Hawaii’s false missile alert (2018), 35–36 heart attack–stress study (2013), 25 Hicks, Donna, 7 Hirota and Jennifer’s story, 68–70 humanity dangerous love allows us to see, 152–153 honoring our mutual, 140–141 ubuntu (traditional African belief), 150–151 Ibrahim and Ahmed’s story, 177–179, 182, 190, 191 I-It relationships athletes voicing support of, 75–76 closed approach reinforcing, 130–134 description and self-interest of, 72–73, 73fig how we react to I-Thou vs., 104 I-It and I-Thou statements exercise, 80–81, 80t as smog thinking, 79 See also objects; relationships international conflicts, 112–113 inviting others to turn daughter and boyfriend story, 58–59, 58fig description, 21–22, 218 easy love role in, 119fig father’s story on power of, 216–217 long-short way, 180, 181fig Miriam and Mahmoud’s story on, 15fig, 21–22 Phillip and Jackson’s story, 169 short-long way, 179fig what if they won’t turn?, 172–174 Iroquois Great Law of, 180 seven generations law, 180 Isa Upanishad (Hindu scripture), 17 Israeli National League Championship game (2014), 184–185 Israeli–Palestinian conflict, 112–113, 138–140, 186–189, 194–198

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Index I-Thou relationships Arbinger Institute’s success in codifying, 201–202 description of, 72–73, 72fig how we react to I-It vs., 104 I-It and I-Thou statements exercise, 80–81, 80t Mãori people (Aotearoa, or New Zealand) value in, 76–77 teaching athletes to appreciate, 77–79 Yusuf and Avi’s fictional story on, 83–84 See also people; relationships Japanese and Korean students story, 84–85 Jasmine’s story, 189–190 Jennifer and Hirota’s story, 68–70 justice restorative, 155–156, 159–165 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), 150, 151, 158, 181, 193–194 justice and wholeness exercise, 164–165 justification Chuck and author’s story on wanting, 98–101, 104–106, 107–108, 109fig collusion in conflict spiral as form of, 100–106, 108–115 of our actions toward It/objects, 97–98 as part of self-deception paradox, 93 Raul’s story on the ultimate, 108–111 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 75, 97, 137–138, 140 Knost, LR, 135 kumbaya fallacy, 140–141, 148 “Kumbaya” song, 135–136, 190 Leadership and Self-Deception (Arbinger Institute), 5 Leadership Development Program (LDP; Arbinger Institute), 185–190 leaving strategy, 122, 123–124

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237

Lederach, John Paul, 125–126, 141, 153–154, 180 letting go of fears of conflict, 17–19, 34–36, 58, 58fig conflict transformation when, 17–19 daughter and boyfriend story, 58fig, 59–60 description of, 218 Hawaii’s false missile alert (2018) and, 35–36 Miriam’s story on, 19–20, 32, 181 of people we are in conflict with, 19–20, 32, 58, 58fig Phillip and Jackson’s story on, 169 long-short way, 180–182, 190 lost faith, 191–193 love easy, 3, 119–122, 119fig, 127 as key to transforming conflict, 3 mending relationships through, 5 See also dangerous love Mandela, Nelson, 149 Mãori people (Aotearoa, or New Zealand), 76–77 Mãori proverb, 76 math teacher story, 117–119 mercy finding mercy exercise, 164 moving from truth to, 158–159 See also forgiveness metaphor exercises follow up to how we think about conflict, 36–37 on how we think about conflict, 23–24 metaphors cocoon thinking, 36, 37, 40–41, 52–53, 55–60 smog thinking, 24–25, 29, 33, 34, 36, 37 Middle East conflict, 112–113, 138–140, 186–189, 194–198 Miriam and Mahmoud’s story, 7–17, 15fig, 19–20, 32, 58, 181 mistake challenges exercise, 94–95 moral imagination, 141

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INDEX

more communication method, 122, 124–126 Morrison, Toni, 39 Mozambique civil war, 169–172 Nabi, Hermann, 25 Netanyahu, Benjamin, 112–113 New Zealand Mãori people of, 76–77 restorative justice field in, 155–156 Nike, 182 Nordstrom, Carolyn, 169–172 Oatmeal Rule, 180 objects Arbinger Institute on seeing people instead of, 8 Arbinger workshop on seeing people as, 91–92 beach trip story on selfdeception and, 85–89 closed approach perceiving people as, 130–134 “gathering allies” collusion role in seeing, 108–111 homework assignment on seeing people instead of, 84–89 how we justify our actions toward, 97–98 PeacePlayers’ basketball program to change seeing, 182–190 See also I-It relationships; selfdeception paradox The Office, 49–50, 51 Oliver, Mary, 155 open approaches, 130–134 operationalizing peace exercise, 174–176 Oslo peace accords, 112 Outward Mindset, The (Arbinger Institute), 5 Palestinian Liberation Organization, 112 peacemaking at cultural, structural, and direct levels, 144–146, 171–172 Galtung’s peace triangle, 172, 172fig Ibrahim and Ahmed’s story on, 177–179

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the kumbaya fallacy, 140–141, 148 “Kumbaya” image of, 135–136, 190 long-short way to, 180–182, 190 operationalizing peace exercise, 174–176 short-long way to, 179–180, 179fig PeacePlayers, 178–179, 182–190 peanut better and jelly story, 210–213 people Arbinger Institute on seeing, 8 Arbinger workshop on seeing, 91–92 critical value of seeing people as, 146, 147 homework assignment on seeing, 84–89 how we treat those we see as, 138–140 humanity of, 140–141 let go of your fear of, 19–20, 32, 58fig, 169, 217 open approach perceiving, 130–134, 131t others may not see you as, 202–204 PeacePlayers’ basketball program to see, 182–190 from seeing to doing to reconnecting, 151–154 See also I-Thou relationships Peterson, Wilfred Arlan, 55 Pew Research Center study (2018), 2 Phillip and Jackson’s story, 167–169, 181 problem-solving conflict management selfinterest approach for, 48 smog thinking centers on selfinterest, 41–42 value of collaborative, 147 See also conflict resolution; solutions Psalm 85:10, 149 Ramallah conflict transformation workshop (West Bank), 194–198

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Index Raul’s story, 108–111 reconciliation as constructive approach, 41 Curandeiros (Mozambique healers) leading the, 170–172 description and benefits of, 63–64 making reparations aspect of, 160–163 mercy and forgiveness aspects of, 158–159, 213–216 narrative and truth aspects of, 156–159 from seeing to doing to reconnecting, 151–154 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), 150, 151, 158, 181, 193–194 what if they won’t turn toward?, 172–174 See also forgiveness; restorative justice/restitution regressive behavior, 42–43, 43fig relationships conflict as part of all, 2 dangerous love transforms our, 22 father’s story on healing a, 205–217 love needed to mend, 5 perceived through self-deception lens, 71–72 See also connections; I-It relationships; I-Thou relationships reparations, 160–163 resistance, 139–140 restorative justice/restitution exercises on, 163–165 Mozambique Curandeiros (healers) leading the, 170–172 narratives and truth aspects of, 155–156 to restore instead of destroying, 159–163 See also reconciliation Rice, Susan, 187 Ross, Dennis, 112 Rumi, 127 Santos’s story, 171–172 Scott, Michael (The Office character), 49–50, 51

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239

“seeing” classroom exercise, 202–203 self-deception paradox The Anatomy of Peace on dangers of, 83–84 beach trip story on, 85–89 challenge of solving, 91 justifying our actions toward Its/ objects, 97–98 as practicing dangerous love barrier, 67 turns justifications into reality, 93 two-part definition of, 71 See also conflict perceptions; objects self-interest athletes voicing support of I-It and, 75–76, 79 as conflict management belief, 48 I-It relationship as focused on, 72–73, 73fig smog problem-solving centers on, 41–42 separation barrier, 67 seven generations law (Iroquois), 180 Sharon’s story, 188–189 short-long way, 179–180, 179fig 60 Minutes, 187 small and simple things, 191–194, 204 smog metaphor, 24–25, 29, 34, 36, 37 smog thinking conflict resolution as either cocoon or, 41, 52–53 description of, 36–37, 128 problem-solving centers on selfinterest, 41–42 seeing others as It as heart of, 79 theory of the conflict with, 40–42 win-lose mindset, 53 solutions compromising for, 52, 52fig daughter and boyfriend story on finding, 60 The Office episode approach to, 49–50 understanding the whys of conflict to reach a, 51

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INDEX

solutions (continued) United Nations Cyprus peacekeepers approach to, 48–49 See also conflict resolution; problem-solving South Africa, 149–151, 158, 182 SportsUnited program (US State Department), 187 Stanford University CEO study (2013), 2 stolen bike story, 160, 161–162 stories. See conflict stories stress–heart attack study (2013), 25 structural peace, 172, 172fig structural violence, 143–144, 144fig surfing story, 85–89 Tavris, Carol, 83 theory of the conflict, 40–42 truth moving to mercy from, 158–159 restorative justice demands, 155–156 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC; South Africa), 150, 151, 158, 181, 193–194 uncovering the truth exercise, 163–164 Tuohey, Brendan, 182 Tuohey, Sean, 182 Turkish–Greek Cypriots conflict, 48–49 turning first as critical value, 147 daughter and boyfriend story, 58, 58fig

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description, 20–21218 easy love as invitation to, 119–120, 119fig father’s story on power of, 216–217 long-short way, 180, 181fig Miriam and Mahmoud’s story on, 10, 15fig, 20–21, 181 Phillip and Jackson’s story on, 169 short-long way, 179fig Tutu, Desmond, 149, 150, 151, 159, 181, 193–194 ubuntu (African belief), 150–151 uncovering the truth exercise, 163–164 United Nations Cyprus peacekeepers, 48–49 Ury, William, 52–53 values collaborative problem-solving, 147 dangerous love values exercise, 146–148 living our, 145 seeing people as people, 146 turning first, 147 violence triangle, 143–145, 172 Warner, Terry, 125 win-lose mindset, 53 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 67 Yom Kippur sermon, 189–190 Yusuf and Avi’s fictional story, 83–84

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ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Would you like a little more Dangerous Love? We have additional resources online. You can access worksheets for the exercises in the book. And you can listen to Chad Ford’s Dangerous Love podcast and follow his blog, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter feeds. You can also book your own Dangerous Love speaking engagement, workshop, or conflict mediation online. Website/Blog/Podcast: www.dangerouslovebook.com Instagram: @dangerouslovebook Facebook: www.facebook.com/dangerouslovebook Twitter: @chadmichaelford

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Chad Ford has been living five lives simultaneously for nearly fifteen years. He’s been an international conflict mediator, a college professor, a senior consultant and facilitator for the Arbinger Institute, an executive board member for PeacePlayers, and a writer, analyst, and entrepreneur covering the NBA and NBA Draft for ESPN. While most people know him for his work at ESPN, being a basketball analyst and writer was actually his side gig for most of the last two decades. Chad’s peacebuilding work is what defines him. After completing a master’s degree in conflict analysis and resolution from George Mason University and a juris doctorate from Georgetown University Law School in 2000, Chad was poised to begin his career as a conflict mediator and facilitator. However, Chad sold a small internet start-up, Sportstalk .com, that he cofounded while in graduate school to ESPN right after he graduated and spent the next four years working full-time with ESPN. The experience of covering NBA games was a lifelong dream, but Chad yearned to do something more impactful with his conflict resolution skills. In 2005, he left his full-time work with ESPN to become the director of the David O. McKay Center for Intercultural Understanding at Brigham Young University–Hawaii.

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Ab out the Author

In Hawaii, Chad created a major and certificate program in intercultural peacebuilding, mediation, and facilitation. Chad and his wife, Amanda, who teaches courses in family conflict transformation and mindfulness, have worked with thousands of students from over ninety countries in the world. Chad’s work has earned him Professor of the Year honors at BYU-Hawaii and made Intercultural Peacebuilding one of the most popular programs on campus. Chad’s work has frequently taken him out of the classroom and into conflict zones around the world. He’s made nearly fifty trips to the Middle East and has worked on numerous other conflicts around the world as both a mediator and a facilitator. Chad has served as a senior consultant, speaker, and facilitator for the Arbinger Institute since 2006—working with governments, nongovermental organizations, and corporations such as Nike and the US Olympic team. He’s also helped Arbinger develop trainings and curricula on conflict resolution as well as a training guide on reconciliation based on the documentary Beyond Right and Wrong. He’s been able to combine his expertise on both sports and conflict by serving as an executive board member of the nonprofit peacebuilding organization PeacePlayers. His work has included designing the peacebuilding curriculum used by PeacePlayers in the Middle East; training thousands of coaches, staff, and participants in workshops; and most recently, guiding PeacePlayers through the process of creating the Friendship Games and PeacePlayers Leadership Academy, which will bring together participants from conflict areas around the world. The book Dangerous Love weaves Chad’s experiences from those five lives into a deeply personal exploration of how we transform fear and conflict. Chad’s work with

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young people in the classroom, athletes on the basketball court, struggling families in the living room, executives in the boardroom, and divided communities in some of the most challenging conflicts in the world gives him a unique perspective and voice to the conflicts that plague our families, our organizations, and the world.

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