It’s Not About Justice, It’s About Peace

It’s Not About Justice, It’s About Peace

We had dinner last night with two friends who have moved here from Phoenix. The overriding topic of the evening was about family relationships that have gone off the tracks. The similarities of our experiences, both cases involving animosities between in-laws and mutual senses that the basis for the animosity is much deeper than the superficial tipping-point incidents, were startlingly similar. One of the funnier similarities was that in both cases the directly involved member of the couple harbored a willingness to move on, but an overriding need to explain their innocence in the matter, while the other member of the couple thought that explanation or rationalization was futile and that the only solution involved “letting it go” more than anything else. Both aggrieved parties present were outwardly willing to do that on the surface, but neither felt it was either a “their fault” or no-fault situation that warranted such egregiously compromising circumstances. In fact, both aggrieved parties felt that they were being “hit and run” attacked as a means of ritual leveling of a playing field that was otherwise tilted by some unseen force of natural selection, in their favor. Neither felt that they had instigated the conflict or even the imbalance that seemed to spawn it, but that they were now being asked to ignore all the facts in favor of a blanket resolution. The sense of the injustice of it all prevailed on one half of the room while the other half was far less concerned about seeking justice or righteousness in favor of seeking harmony.

As I have pondered that discussion, I have found myself wondering if the duality of the stances was more a function of inherent behavior or circumstantial realities. This seems all, once again, a fancy way of asking if it’s about nature or nurture. If the tables were turned between members of each couple, would the outcome be the same or different? It so happens that while I cannot speak to the life examples of the other couple, I can give an example for conjecture amongst Kim and me. Not surprisingly, I am forced to reveal that I am the aggrieved or aggrieving party on our side of this story and Kim is the harmonious one. As will be no surprise to anyone who knows us, Kim is someone who represents grace in the world while I represent something else entirely. I am aware of grace and I speak to it and admire it, but would imagine that very few people who know me would start a list of descriptors of me with “Filled with Grace.” Rather, I am a man of the world and that world is one based on nature and working my way through it as best I know how. I grant you that I was probably miscast as a Wall Street player since I would have no problem finding people to testify that I was one of the least uncaring and brazenly aggressive characters that walked the canyons of New York. While those same people would modify that opinion with caveats like “You don’t want to piss him off” or “He knew very well how to play the game”, the consensus would still leave me at the milder/gentler end of the spectrum amongst the general category of “Monsters I have Known.”

This pondering I have been doing does not involve coming up with examples of circumstances where I was the counterparty of grace, but rather an example where Kim was put upon by a close friend in what ended up as a rift of relationship-renting drama. It strikes me that we enter into social relationships to fill needs we all have in our psyches. This is rarely a conscious business, but is rather a gap-filling exercise our social being undertakes all on its own. That’s not to say we don’t get close to people for conscious reasons and attractions, but that often we are drawn to closeness with others that complement ourselves. This is the basic “opposites attract” theory of the universe. And, of course, as we evolve as human beings, our gaps and needs invariably change. This makes for dynamic imbalances where unless the gaps being filled are more fundamental rather than developmental, there are bound to be dislocations in the making. Few among us is so complete that we do not need our own Jerry Maguires that complete us, but our thirty-something selves wouldn’t necessarily recognize our sixty-something selves, so Jerry may outlive his completeness utility.

For instance, Kim now has a friend that on the surface seems quite her opposite. Where Kim lives in the arts, this woman is a hard-charging business person. Few would equate them and yet they have become fast friends and have found many shared joys and experiences. But then Kim has evolved from being a practitioner of the arts to being a manager and governance person for the arts and this friend is very helpful to her transition to that place. QED (quod erat demonstrandum), a gap has been filled and an opposite in search of a solution has been attracted.

But years ago, when we first met, Kim’s best friend was one who filled a need of the moment, a need of a woman in mid-life who was alone and yet was in search of a family and stronger relationship tie. Objectively, no one, especially not her best friend, would have wanted her not to reach fulfillment. But fulfillment leads to change and change is what fills or modifies gaps. Solid friendships and familial relationships adjust. What mother does not want her little chick to fly the nest, but yet, what mother has not had angst over the loss of the parental need for them while in the nest? It is the very essence of life in its progression. We need change and want it and yet we fear change and want to prevent it. The well-adjusted soul understands all of that intuitively and accepts that evolution of relationships, albeit not without some angst. Kim’s friend simply could not accept the reality of her changed status when we met and forged our new life together.. It was very painful and dramatic because of the closeness of the relationship. First her friend was aggrieved, then her friend was demonstrative in her feelings, then her friend was unwilling to listen to Kim’s side of the story, and finally, the friend shut down and chose to cease being a friend.

Kim has not spoken to that old friend for fifteen years now. Her ancillary relationships with the friend’s family have equally come to an end. The pain of the one has transferred into the pain of the other. Kim was deeply hurt by this outcome and like all grief, she has had to go through the stages to arrive at acceptance. And the acceptance itself has a deep-seated sorrow of a friendship lost that didn’t need to end. But it did need to end for the other person for some reason, so the intransigence became the overriding factor and Kim and her friend are no longer friends. I honestly believe that Kim would let bygones be bygones and be happy to revive the friendship. She would happily “let it go” and revival would erase any memory of pain, but that requires the boycotting friend to remove the boycott and there are no signs of that happening.

So, my conclusion is this: friendships and relationships (even family ones) always evolve. It is the natural way of things. Some people are in relationships for the moment and some want them to last forever. Some are in them for holistic reasons and some are just filling a gap. Few of us are up to the task of self-examination to continuously monitor and assess our psyches to explain our relationships. We mostly just carry on and deal with what comes. When things go off the track, it is incumbent on us (if and only if we want to keep that rapport) to self-assess with honesty and clarity. We need to focus less on what the others have done and more about our own inadequacies and shortcomings. If we can restrict ourselves thus, we have a better chance of repair. Without it, we are all just another locomotive on a siding, going nowhere. It is not about justice, it is about peace and the peace in our soul is either best served on the tracks or on the siding.