on conflicts

being a people-pleaser as I am, I run away from conflicts as far as I can. i usually succeed but somehow conflict manages to find me and trap me from all directions this week.

observing what people say when they are in conflict makes me think. i notice that people often make judgements based on their end of the line: how the other person's actions make them feel, or what they think the other person's intentions are.

i guess it's not wrong because, hey, we can't read people's minds. all data that we have is what we observe. all we can feel is what we feel... we can't feel what the other person is feeling.

however, i think that it is unfair to make judgements based completely on how you think or feel. your thoughts will be influenced by your private experiences, and the other person might have a set of completely different experiences. you might think a person does X because of Y, because in your world, everybody does X because of Y. you might think doing X because of Y is very outrageous and thus you think the person is outrageous. however, maybe in that person's world, X is a result of Z, and Z is the reason they did X. In their world, X is actually a good thing to do as a result of Z. Therefore the person means no harm, and actually has good intentions.

i'm inclined to think how lovely this world will be if people can based other's actions based solely on intentions. i think people rarely has the intentions to hurt others; it just happens that things came out wrong and thus people got hurt.

i also think that your response to getting hurt should not be to impose pain on other people... or else it will just be a vicious cycle. i'm inclined to get angry at a person who hurts others because they are hurt. but if i "judge based on intentions", they can be defended. what if, the person has no intentions to hurt others, but in their state of hurt, they don't have the ability to act another way but to respond harshly (in their world, that is the only response in their vocabulary). their harsh response might be the only way (in their mind) to prevent them from getting hurt more. or maybe they do intend to hurt others.... so the others understood what it feels like to get hurt and thus stop hurting others.

in light of justice, some actions are wrong no matter what the intentions were. for instance, cheating is wrong, even if your intentions is to get good grades so your teacher won't get fired because they cannot bring the students' grades up.

but we should, ultimately, stop keeping track of who's right and wrong, and whose actions are more justified. if God were to be fair, we're all going to hell anyway.

"but the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair"

- relient K, "be my escape"