Let's Fight!

Let’s Fight!

No, not really. However conflict and friendship is on my mind today, but first allow me to apologize for the lateness of this missive.

I cautioned you before, myself really, about choosing your battles. That you have to be certain you’re getting into a conflict for the right reasons, not simply because you can, or because you’re emotional invested in something. Oddly I would warn not to fight when you’re angry though being angry is a clear indication that something is wrong and needs to be sorted out.

But I digress, that’s not really the subject on my mind today. Today I’m thinking of conflict and friendship.

I do not know if one can have a friendship that never has conflict, but I am certain one cannot have a friendship if it cannot weather conflict.

I am by no means saying you have to tolerate toxic, harmful or abusive people in your life because they are you friend. I would of course argue that someone who is toxic, harmful or abusive to you, even accidently, is not your friend.

That being said people are distinct, they will have differing points of view and sometimes they will come into conflict. As a friend you have the responsibility to honestly debate your friends and they you. It is these people, your peers who best know you who have the most ability to understand your flaws and aim you at them.

Unless you have a good therapist.

I liken this to a wrestling of ideas, hence the picture. You are in conflict, each trying to pin the other’s thesis down, to prove the value of your own however there should be no animosity there. Even in loosing you learn why you lost and become better prepared for the next conflict. Just as each wrestling match makes you a better wrestler each conflict makes your ideas more resound.

What’s that phrase? “I philosophize with a hammer!”

Let your friends be your hammer, and be there’s so that you forge better tools. For that’s what an idea, a philosophy is, right? A mental tool you use to understand and navigate the world.

I’m mixing metaphors, sorry.

What if you can’t though? If you can’t wrestle with your friends ideas or they yours. What if one of you pulls away, storms off or closes things down? Then you have to ask yourself a few really important questions. Do you value this person’s opinion? Are your opinions’ valued? Do you view your idea as too sacred to be questions; and if so why? Do they? And most importantly, to my mind, what is this friendship’s value if we cannot debate?

To pull out another old phrase. “You will know him by the company he keeps.”

Your friends should be your partners, be it for a time or for life. Partners help each other, even if it means fighting, especially if it means fighting because partners do not fight over trivial things. They fight when something of meaning is at stake, when one or both of them have something they need to learn.

I hope three things. First: I hope you respect yourself enough to pick a fight when you need to. Second: I hope you respect your friends enough to let them pick a fight with you. Third: I hope you are respected enough for your friends to see value in your words when they bring you into conflict with them.

Sorry that got a little long but I hope you find some value in it my dear readers. Take care and God bless;

~S. Wallace