The Persistent Presence of Conflict and How To Deal With It

Conflict arises whenever opposing forces or desires collide and cannot be readily reconciled. Conflict is the relationship or interaction among incompatible choices, internal or external.

Sometimes the conflict is benign like choosing between two lines at the Verizon store, and wanting to be sure you are in the fastest line. Other times the conflict is weightier like staying with the job you have or moving across the country for a job that “looks” better. And then there are the life-altering conflicts like choosing between surgery and immuno-therapy for your cancer diagnosis.

These conflicts have three things in common. First, there is uncertainty because there is not a guaranteed outcome, yet there is an outcome we prefer. Second, the uncertainty creates discomfort—large or small—as we worry about a future result. Third, each of these conflicts could take place completely within our heads with no input from another person at all. They are all internal conflicts, even though they could become external as we bring others into our decision-making process.

Think for a moment how you address your internal conflicts. You might not call them conflicts at all. However, I would suggest that with the rarest exceptions, any time you feel uncomfortable, you are facing desires or forces that are not readily reconciled and uncertainty abounds. And as Dark Rain Thom said at a women’s conference years ago, “The moment of absolute certainty never comes.”

Finding a way to integrate uncertainty seems to be among our biggest human challenges. We grasp for certainty even where it is nowhere to be found. Consider how we are drawn to meteorologists to forecast tomorrow’s weather, oddsmakers to foretell the Super Bowl, pollsters to predict the election, or doctors to offer the five-year survival rate for our cancer. We want a future guarantee that no one promises. We will all be a statistic; we just don’t know which one and when.

If conflict abounds, then an essential question for all of us is how we answer the challenge—avoidance, denial, engagement, or a mix. Recognizing the persistent presence of conflict is essential if we are to respond instead of reacting to our uneasy relationship with it.