“We don’t see people as they are. We see people as we are.” – Anais Nin

I receive emails from a blog by Robert Glazer I’m subscribed to: Friday Forward, and “Common Humanity (#355)” spoke to me, because it offered solutions that other people had undertaken and had achieved success with regarding hate and racism, 2 issues we’re seeing in abundance now around the world.

Of course, I would love to see different wars around the world reach truces, and the people themselves become ready to reconcile, but I realize in order for that to happen, each of us as individuals first needs to come to peace with our neighbors in our hearts and be able to treat one another with respect and neighborliness.

Will we ever be able to undo injustices and make all the reparations we need to? Probably not.

We need to start somewhere, and that starts with being able to see the people who are different from us as human beings, not as animals, and most of us have similar desires in life.

Robert Glazer writes about hearing Daryl Davis speak, and how he was impacted by the thought that getting to know one another and creating a sense of common humanity has helped some leaders to help people bridge the divides.

I have heard of these things before, and indeed have written about them too. They are part of my life passion project.

Davis helped me understand a better way forward. In his speech, and in our subsequent interview on the Elevate Podcast, Davis shared his belief that all people want the same five things:

1. To be heard
2. To be respected
3. To be loved
4. To be treated fairly
5. To have those same things for their family

Davis’s recognition of that commonality, along with his willingness to be vulnerable and speak with people who both disagreed with him and even hated him, is what allowed him to successfully neutralize hate. He also came to better understand the origin of others’ beliefs and pain. Bridging these divides is challenging, but the results can be powerful. I’ve explored this before in the story of Michael Weisser, a Rabbi who built a relationship with a KKK leader and, like Davis, persuaded him to leave the Klan for good, and in the story of Danish politician Ozlem Cekic, who frequently has coffee with the people who send her hate mail.

Peace breaks when people feel they have been wronged

The conflicts started when one or more sides no longer saw their neighbor as a neighbor to try to get along with, but they allowed themselves to denigrate their neighbor to the point of no longer seeing their humanity, and deserving of basic rights and respect.

These conflicts often carry much older unresolved pains, so when one side takes a negative action, it can very quickly devolve where neither side sees the other as worthy, and instead treats them as the enemy they have become to them. Instead of trying to work things out, one side jumps to take hostile action, which then gets reciprocated.

There are many situations around the world where that wasn’t the model for the breakdown, rather one side saw economic advantage to take what wasn’t theirs, whether it be land, resources, or the inhabitants of an area seen as marketable commodities instead of human beings, or as undesirables who needed to be eradicated.

Building bridges requires us to manage expectations

I do not claim to have the answers for resolving terrible, terrible situations in the world, I can only point to other who have taken the very courageous steps to reconcile. Reconciliation doesn’t necessarily mean that EVERYONE will be at peace or healed from what happened, so let’s try to manage expectations and instead try to see a present conflict with possibly a new viewpoint in the future.

Starting the work to build the bridge from a present conflict to future peaceful living starts with both sides choosing to be intentional to focus on peace.

There needs to be a deep understanding that restoring things back to wholeness, how they were prior to all the conflicts, is unrealistic, for all sides have sustained deep losses.

Every single conflict has different roots, has had different terrors being inflicted, and will also require a unique roadmap to reconcile and heal. Each situation needs a customized approach to find peaceful resolutions, for there may not be only one item that needs to be addressed.

We also need to acknowledge that creating peace will not necessarily result in loving relationships, and if one side refuses to make substantial changes, that ultimately a simple goal of living a peaceful life may be barely achievable.

Sometimes we just need to agree to disagree, to then give plenty of space for the other person to just go live their life. In many circumstances however, we need to agree on certain terms of how that life will look.

Creating a mindset to Peace

As humans, we often hold onto the thought “When THEY admit they are wrong, THEN I will be willing to start doing my part.”

We see this in families, in communities, and in countries. We all tend to have this gut reaction, our sense of justice towards our own side is inflamed and raw.

How do we move past this impasse, when each side sees they are so very right, and the other side is so very wrong?

I see a correlation between addiction and conflict resolution, in that the affected parties need to reach a point of making an inner decision to do things differently for change to happen. If each side keeps walking the old path, being hateful and hurtful to each other, the same situation will just continue to devolve as hurt piles upon hurt.

Just like in addiction recovery, conflict resolution is a process, with many baby steps linked together on the path to healing.

It starts within each of our minds and hearts. We need to go inwardly, to start doing our own shadow work, our own healing.

We also need to see ourselves and the other person as being worthy for things to change, for healing to start, for conflicts to diminish.

When we can see one another as worthy, worthwhile human beings, we can begin to examine new solutions, or revisit previously proposed solutions that were rejected.

When we see the value in others, people who don’t live or act like us, we can begin to entertain thoughts and actions to treat one another with respect, with neighborliness.

This is when the true bridge building begins in earnest.

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Additional reading to see how other conflicts were resolved around the world:

1994 Rwandan Genocide and lasting 100 days:

• Rwanda, University of Minnesota, Holocaust and Genocide Studies
• Rwanda in 1994, World Vision
• Living in Rwanda, Carnegie Mellon University Africa

Other examples of international conflicts that were solved peacefully.

1. The Treaty of Versailles in 1919, which formally ended World War I and established the League of Nations.
2. The Camp David Accords in 1978, which led to a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.
3. The Good Friday Agreement in 1998, which brought an end to the conflict in Northern Ireland.
4. The Oslo Accords in the 1990s, which aimed to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, though the situation remains unresolved.

These examples demonstrate that peaceful resolutions to international conflicts are possible through diplomacy, negotiation, and compromise.

I hope you’ll poke around my Archived Posts to find a wonderful trove of supportive and encouraging posts! Don’t forget to Like, Comment, and Follow my blog! If you want to become a Guest writer, please contact me and we’ll work out the details!

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