Lovely. I struggle with this myself in my own philosophy, since my tendency is not to be attached to my view of rightness, but rather attached to the desire to avoid conflict, sometimes to my own long-term detriment. How do you maintain that emotional equilibrium and still burn with passion for social justice, for fixing the environment? How do you turn nonattachment into something other than nihilism? I think that attachment to compassion must remain. I think that attachment to the Four Great Vows (http://www.io.com/~snewton/zen/fourvows.html) must remain. But I am a novice, and arrogant in my assumptions.

Kikipotamus the Hobo – you really made me smile with your note – thank you!

K – this is a Big Question you have raised – how can I be passionate about something and be detached at the same time? I don’t know, not fully. Like you, I’m also attached to a desire to avoid conflict, which I didn’t articulate inside my own head until I read what you wrote, so thank you. My “rightness” is often internal, but not expressed externally, which means it eats me up–because I want to avoid conflict. Thank you for helping me see that paradox… There is so much in what you’ve written that opens new doors of thought for me–many thanks.

Bill – you’re very perceptive. thanks for asking. i appreciate the truths you see in me – really, I do. I am particularly drawn to #5, though the others – in the long run – are more meaningful, I know… (smile) I do so appreciate your kind words – I have a hard time hearing them, or accepting them (see “L is for Little…”) I am grumpy for many reasons – perhaps one of them is impatience with the hidden messages we see around us in the world – or people who hire me without clear intentions or whose intention is to cover their rear end, not really do the work. I’m grumpy about consultants who placate and entertain rather than challenge and involve. I’m grumpy about people and politicians who lie. I’m grumpy about knowing that the work I’m doing in my professional career is the deepest, most meaningful work I’ve ever done–and yet doesn’t sustain me because it makes people really work, not just check off a box–and we’re a society of “quick fixes.” I’m grumpy that we play small. Shall I go on? ;-) thanks again for asking – and for telling – and for caring.

Hi Patti, thanks for the conversation. I know some people who were drawn to the nonviolence and nonattachment of certain philosophies (examples are Buddhism and Quaker) because they in fact matched an internal tendency towards avoiding conflict. Why can’t everyone get along? OK, I’ll make it all better. I won’t bring up upsetting things when I don’t have an answer. I won’t confront a destructive person with the truth, because they’re not in a place to listen and they may choose to escalate. I’ll wallpaper over our differences to make everyone comfortable so that they won’t leave or bully me. Sound co-dependent yet? How about spending so much time internally explaining away our growing sense of unease about a situation until we blow up and feel like the only method of recourse is to react violently out of proportion, out of control…and then spend lots of time apologizing, making ourselves small again for as long as possible until yet again we can’t take it anymore…

This is why I fear giving up my sense of seeking to ‘be right’. Because it’s usually the first step for me in ignoring my own boundaries and compromising my own set of values, trying too hard to appease someone else who may or may not have my best interests at heart.

Perhaps there’s a middle ground. Perhaps one can have strong boundaries with a solid sense of “rightness” that can exist separately from an ego-driven desire to be right. Perhaps that’s really what the heart of these non-violent methods of communication are trying to tell us. Perhaps it is possible to non-egotistically, spontaneously assert those boundaries without apology, without negotiation, without guilt.

This may or may not be pertinent to your situation. I apologize if it is not, obviously I’m not trying to read your mind. But the taste of what you were saying…let’s just say it tasted awfully familiar to me, and so I wished to warn you from rationalizing away your own sense of unease that may be a disguised boundary talking, trying to get past your clever neocortex mind and warn you that someone’s trying to violate you.

But that could be me projecting my own weaknesses upon you. Namaste.

katiebean – great distinction to try to decipher, between thinking and knowing. I spend a lot of time pondering what knowing is, how it comes to us. In the case of the black dot, that was a very personal “knowing.” It was knowing for me, not a knowing that I imagined existed outside of myself. Resonant knowing – what a wonderful phrase. Thank you for sparking further thought on this…

K, Oh, my. So very much here to think about – and learn from. I agree that there is an insidious relationship between avoiding conflict at all costs, losing our own edges and boundaries, and being right only for ego’s sake. Letting anger seep inward and then exploding–or disconnecting altogether–doesn’t feel healthy to me. Your words help me see that more clearly. I am working to stand up straight in my own boundaries and yet allow others to live from within their own worldview–that my “right” need not be someone else’s “right”–and, most importantly, that I not contribute to their “right” by supporting it in a co-dependent way, or being complicit in it. My essay, “E is for Esther” comes to mind–the ability to say “I don’t see the truth in that.” Thanks for all this important thinking… Perhaps that middle ground is where I want to head in this journey.

Marilyn, who, me, aging? ;-) So interesting that you bring up the point of others wanting to bring us into their thorn bush…I think there is such truth in that – and how very much it takes to say “no” to that sharing of thorniness, to walk away from that pain, to refuse to participate in it….

I just had to come back to tell you that I’ve thought about this post several times in the last couple of days. I’ve been so caught up in paperwork and organizing and dealing with anxious parents for the last month, that when our U.S. History teacher walked by yesterday and reminded me that he and I were planning to start a new club on campus this year, I was shocked that I’d completely forgotten about it…and it was my idea that I took to him to see if he’d collaborate! The idea? To start a peace club (although we might not call it that)…a unity club…a (I don’t know yet what to call it) club. To promote tolerance and understanding and compassion on campus. And this post keeps coming to mind when I think about doing that. I didn’t relate this post to areas where I feel taken advantage of (although those situations do exist in my worklife…and boy, do I ever get angry when I know I’m RIGHT!) What it did make me think about again is how much TIME and ENERGY(!) I DEVOTE (because it is a sort of perverted devotion practice) to righteous indignation…and how icky and empty I feel afterwards. I’d much rather take that energy and do something constructive with it.

I like to equate being right to winning. There was a time when I HAD to win every argument. Now, I just WANT to win every argument. The switch came while reading M. Scott Peck’s, The Road Less Traveled. If I recall correctly, Peck discussed playing Chess with his daughter. He was challenged when his daughter asked him why HE always had to win?

I agree with you, “Let it be a barn.” At the same time, respectful conflict, debate and arguments can lead to positive change.

There is a Proverb that says, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” That is a road I would like to avoid if possible. I would prefer knowing the way that leads to eternal life.

What was your take-away from reading The Chosen by Chaim Potok?