babel babble

At one point in time, humans were so up on themselves, they decided to build a huge tower to reach god, so they could take over and start running this joint for good. God got pissed, struck them all down and gave them the gift of different languages so that they would have to work really, really hard to understand each other, thereby throwing a wrench in their egotistical operations. It also became a huge construction setback and the tower of Babel was given up for impossible. Sadly, communicatively, we don't seem to have progessed very far since that time, so I guess god's position is safe; a shrewd job security move on his part.

Conflict, being a part of life, is made much much easier by the ability to communicate with one another. I hate conflict, but when the potential for it arises, I like to deal with it and get it out of my way, so that it is not prolonged, therefore sucking me and everyone around me dry. Not everyone feels this way however, and I find that many, if not most people, will do anything and everything possible to put off any form of conflict, hoping that it will magically resolve itself or go away.

That said, I am willing to concede that wanting to deal with something right then, in the moment, is not necessarily always the best tack and has the potential to cause problems. Though I understand this, I am not always able to accommodate giving time and air to a problem, especially if the other party does not have any ideas for how to dismantle a conundrum before it takes on a life of its own.

There are entire libraries dedicated to conflict resolution. Volumes upon volumes of messages on how to interpret the mysterious language of the angry, the loony, the opposite sex, the religious, etc. It seems to be the subject on which all of one's friends become an expert, as soon as they, themselves have entered into a relationship. The pontificating and surmising advice that people come out with when that happens is truly spectacular. But most of us can, or at least think we can, take care of ourselves and manage our own relationships.

Except for that one time, when, as always happens, there comes a checkpoint, where the two people arrested there for a moment, clearly do not speak the same verbal language, or even the same body language. It is the impasse and it is a dangerous and uncomfortable place to be. It is the junction where the epic battles begin over spilt milk. The battles that could torch cities and sink a thousand ships, yet can't bring forth a single paper towel to clean up the mess.

These are the times when I wish I had been a psychology major. Then I would be able to sit back, smugly, and just know the answer to everything and then wait around a while until my counterparty got his or her head out of their ass and got on board. Wait...I kinda do that now don't I? Actually, come to think of it, everyone does that and that's probably the reason that it, the tiny misunderstanding, becomes the blockbuster epic that it does.

Hey everybody, I seem to have stumbled upon something good here. If we all just stopped being smug assholes, we would probably resolve conflict better. Well then, that was quite an exercise now wasn't it. Pick up yer tools, assholes, it's time to give that babel tower thing another go.