“Of course I know I had a part in it,”  I will sometimes say when telling someone about a conflict I am in the midst of, but then I go on to describe in some detail all that the other person said, did, or didn’t do and don’t focus at all on my words and actions. Recently I have been rereading ANATOMY OF PEACE by the Arbinger Institute which helps us look at all the ways we avoid really looking at our part in disputes and conflicts.

The profound process of self examination this book presents is framed within a story about parents of troubled teens who spend a weekend coming to understand their part in what  goes wrong and learning how to contribute toward helping things go right. While their children are participating in a group wilderness experience, the parents  are led together through an inner process inspired by Martin Buber’s distinction between an “I-Thou” relationship where people are seen as fellow human beings and an “I-It” relationship where they are seen as objects. Their learning is facilitated by a Palestinian whose father was killed by an Israeli and an Israeli whose father was killed by a Palestinian and focuses on four main patterns of self deception  ( we each have our favorites ) which box us in and are used to justify our perceptions and behavior. 

This business of thinking, seeing, and behaving toward others as though they were objects rather than human beings was brought home to me on an ordinary Saturday afternoon several years ago when I was with my young grandchildren. We were stopped at a light that had just changed to green when the person behind me began blowing his horn. This is a pet peeve of mine and I handled it in my usual fashion by driving very very slowly, really just inching along,  through the intersection. One of my granddaughters looked over at me, probably having observed this particular response before, and said, “Gaba, stop it. They may have some place they really need to be.” The people I saw simply in terms of their capacity to irritate me, my granddaughter saw as human beings with needs and desires of their own. People still do occasionally blow their horn at me when I don’t move quickly when the light changes, but my granddaughter’s words stay with me and I no longer inch through the intersection and a small bit of peace has been added to this troubled world.