Through the Wringer
I’ve sometimes thought that the act of harmony and accord is such a tight-rope performance, having us teetering above a cauldron of fiery emotions that lick at our heels and feeling for all the world like they might threaten our very existence. And I wonder sometimes why we put ourselves through the wringer like that?
Are we simply playing the martyr? Thrusting our chins in front of the local bully and allowing him or her to have a free shot! Mon dieu! I’ve sometimes thought that’s precisely what we do in the name of harmony and accord. Peace at all costs. Ah, but are those actions healthy for us. I mean healthy for our insides?
From time to time, I think a real dust up is healthier! There’s nothing as infuriating as pretending that things are well when they aren’t. Pretending to like a situation when we’d much rather clear the air. Lumping it, so the saying goes, is a real suck of the lemon and if you ask me, lemons weren’t meant to be eaten raw! But, I digress.
The attitude of peace at all costs is a killer I think, a killer of emotions and the beauty of disagreeable contention that at least has at its heart both an honesty and a sincerity about it that keeping up appearances doesn’t. But you have to be brave when you step out onto the tight-rope. And when you do, never look down. Chin up and eyes ahead. Why?
Because the thing about harmony and accord is that you get them rubbing people up the wrong way. And whether they realise it or not, people are then forced to express exactly how they feel for all the right reasons rather than through some manufactured days-gone-by ideal of social osmosis. Do I just like a good bit of biffo (australianism for ‘fight’) only when I feel backed into a corner.
Is the biffo always necessary? Depends which end of it you’re on I suppose! Just getting people to say what they mean and mean what they say can be quite a taxing emotional engagement. And funnily enough true harmony and accord comes from a different kind of fire. This kind is in the heart rather than licking at our heels, Is it always possible? No. But trying is at least a signpost along the way wouldn’t you say?
