There was a study done in San Francisco years ago on high conflict custody & access disputes within the family court system. Families, social workers, lawyers, court personnel, educators – all those with connection to the disputants were consulted in an effort to understand why certain cases seemed so intractable, why they weighed down the court system with repeated applications and return visits before a judge.
The researchers then changed the name of the study to “Tribal Warfare”, as they found in every instance a well-meaning relative, friend or significant other (including lawyers and social workers attached to the case) who were not helping ease tensions, but in fact inflaming the fight by their blind loyalty to one disputant over the other.
We see tribal warfare happening in families and in groups on local and international levels today. Someone we care about feels wronged by another. We hear their story. We see it through a lens of caring and loyalty. We filter our perceptions through empathy with how the one we care for is hurt, angry, wounded. We express our support for that person, group or nation, “standing up for them”, perhaps without examining how the one claiming victimhood may have contributed to the conflict or harm done. We show our caring by unquestioning loyalty, by looking the other way, by repeating what our ally has said about the other in moments of anger and thirst for revenge, by judging and finding the other “wrong” because they have hurt someone we care for. By failing to inquire into the fuller context, or to understand more deeply what led to the debacle, we actually contribute to the continuation of the conflict. We have now become part of tribal warfare.
We best serve our friends by modelling an ethos of responsibility, of caring, and of repair where needed. An ethos confirming that we live in a messy world, a world rife with conflict and misunderstanding, where part of our task as hopefully intelligent humans is to work to reduce harms, not to exacerbate them by aligning against the other. Also, by recognizing that all of us have blindspots, frailties, wounds and losses. Maturing means coming to terms with our own issues, making meaning, and practicing forgiveness. Sometimes we need to take a break from a relationship to find more clarity, but “taking a break” doesn’t mean walking away from working on it when the relationship involves close family members or a group with whom we identify or are closely connected. It means giving ourselves space to get clarity, maybe counselling, to do our own healing and hopefully to find ways to bridge the divide. When our friends/family/other group members blindly support us “right or wrong” they do us no favour. They simply help us cling to our smaller version of ourselves, our “wounded child”, to use a therapeutic term.
I like the idea that forgiveness of our parents for their faults and frailties is the route to freedom. Again, that doesn’t mean condoning wrongdoing. It means accepting that our parents did the best they could with the resources they had. It means acknowledging that we all make mistakes and we grow stronger if we can transform our understanding of those mistakes into life lessons.
And if we don’t do that while they are living, we then must communicate with a ghost. Here is 13th century poet Rumi’s take on that challenge:
Let’s love each other,
Let’s cherish each other, my friend, Before we lose each other.
You’ll long for me when I’m gone. You’ll make a truce with me.
So why put me on trial when I’m alive?
Why adore the dead but battle the living? You’ll kiss the headstone of my grave.
Look, I’m lying here still as a corpse, Dead as a stone. Kiss my face instead!
(from Gold, by Rumi, translated by Haleh Liza Gefori)
As Gafori says in her gorgeous new translation: “Rumi’s gold is not the precious metal but a feeling-state arrived at through the alchemical process of altering consciousness, of burning through ego, greed, pettiness and calculation, to arrive at a more relaxed and compassionate state of being…. Gold is the deepest love.”
