A leisurely stroll through Houston's Edith L. Moore Nature Sanctuary provides a kind of serenity and peace that immersing oneself in nature often does. The turtle pond may be my favorite stop, a small body of water surrounded by bushy lizard's tongues and wooden decks that jut out over the water. It is an escape from the madness of the world.
The word imbroglio certainly could describe that madness--especially the political scene, in light of America's sharply divided nation, a situation fueled by leaders of both political parties. While caustic distortion is the name of the game, it has been reported recently that fifty percent of the news about the virus has been traced to bots, automated programs designed to form a specific task and look deceptively human. And our presence on social media has been nothing short of disgraceful in the too frequent attempts to shame and humiliate each other.
But let's put that aside as a temporary blip in the history books and focus on the imbroglios--the intensely complicated disagreements between individuals and even nations, of our daily ordinary lives. Although this word, an Italian derivative of imbrogliare, didn't come into use until approximately 1740-1750, those difficult and acutely painful situations between people are as old as humanity itself.
It has been argued that relationships erode because of rage, mismanaged aggression, and anger. According to psychologist Stephen Diamond, "We tend to see and interpret reality through our own lens." If this is true, then our lens is full of rage. But why? And are we even conscious of it?
Some people attribute our disagreements to trust issues, while others believe when expectations are not met or boundaries are violated, relationships inevitably crumble. Psychologists, however, concur that the problem goes even deeper with mother-father complexes at the heart of it, those positive and negative bits of information and influence we gain from our parents. Since this writer is not a therapist and most of my readers will probably not participate in long term therapy, let's focus on what we do know about the imbroglios we each suffer through and what we can do about them.
When relationships go awry, we often feel like we've been sucked into a vortex of confusion--two parties looking at a reality through very different lenses. How does that happen? We think our own truths are a set of undisputed facts. Red is red, blue is blue, water is wet, and ice is cold, right? No, truths are obviously not that simple. A perception of truth for each of us is based on individual emotions, feelings, and experiences gained throughout our lives. We interpret what we see using the information stored in our brains, everything that has made us who we are. For example, the customs and traditions we grew up with develop our values that we, in our misguided assumptions, often project onto others. The problem is, we aren't privy to the same experiences nor do we respond to them in the same way. Hence, we end up seeing life through individual lenses. Furthermore, influences outside the home as well as personality differences also mold us in different ways even from our siblings and those closest to us.
In 1939 Carl Jung wrote, "We want to have certainties and no doubts--results and no experiments--without ever seeing certainties can arise only through doubts and results only through experiments. The artful denial of a problem will not produce conviction." Imbroglios can be painful and even embarrassing, but the perplexity that results can provide valuable lessons. An understanding of why we fight back so fiercely to be right, to protect what we believe to be true, may actually offer a new and sharper awareness of the mistakes we make regarding how we define our dignity, our rights and our feelings of self-importance. Admitting we are wrong is a humbling experience but one that can result in personal growth, the seeking of new truths.
Clear communication is certainly one more solution. How difficult it is to tell people how we feel and what we want or need! No doubt it would be easier to have people simply read our minds and assume they have all the same information we do, especially similar beliefs and values. Although sharing vital information with others, that is, the facts as we know them, may not solve the problem entirely, it's a good beginning toward developing a life of integrity, kindness, and clarity.
We can look to Abraham Lincoln as our role model of integrity when these unhappy disagreements arise. Two stories in particular from Doris Kearns Goodwin's Leadership in Turbulent Times come to mind. The first, which may have been the start of a life of moral posture for Lincoln, happened in his youth. "Abe's friends liked to play a game of catching turtles and putting hot coals on their backs to see them wriggle. Abe not only told them it was wrong; he wrote a short essay in school against cruelty to animals." Lincoln put this moral courage to use again in a political imbroglio early in his career. When his humor ran amok, caricaturing Democrat Jesse Thomas, his opponent broke down in tears and the incident became known as the "skinning of Thomas." Deeply disturbed by his own shameful cruelty toward his colleague, Lincoln quickly apologized and vowed never to humiliate another person, especially for his own gain.
Americans in particular live fast-paced lives, and the American Dream of conquering new frontiers, as brilliant a concept as it is, frequently disregards setting aside time for mindfulness, reflection, and personal problem-solving that only quality thinking time allows. A final suggestion in the American imbroglio and the search for tranquility is to make nature an habitual part of your life. Decades of research have shown that people who spend time in green spaces live mentally and physically healthier lives. My favorite naturalist-philosopher, Henry David Thoreau, sums it up beautifully in Walden, August 9, 1854:
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Perhaps we can alleviate the imbroglios in our lives by setting aside time to figure out what is most important to us, to value our relationships with friends and family more than the superficial triumph of being right, and to understand the differences that make us interesting fellow travelers rather than pernicious enemies.
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