117. Why do we fight?

If you’ve read my work, you might agree that perspectives are very important, especially in subjective situations.

I have written a dedicated article, where the TL;DR is

“Context is important, Perspective is everything”.

What I never realised, however, is how deep this notion runs.

Today, we decipher this further, in an attempt to realise, why we fight and what we can do to not do that as frequently.

“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.”
― Alphonse Karr, A Tour Round My Garden

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine who lives in a foreign country, visited us. I always love seeing him. We’ve been friends forever, and I have some of my most precious childhood (and adulthood) memories with him and only a few others.

Like we always did, we sat together, ate good food and finally got to talking.

“I’m so glad you’re back man, you should come back more often. Better yet, you should relocate permanently to be closer to all of us”, I said.

“I so wish I could do that man, but such is life. We live in this capitalistic world, and I ought to catch up with the Joneses before I come back home.”, he responded.

Perfectly valid, right?

“But I have this question man, and I hope you won’t mind me asking, but don’t you feel you are way too far away from your family, your friends, people you love?”, I followed up.

His face had this smile, I think he was imagining coming back home for good for a second.

“Come on, man. How could I not? The world outside is different, at times nothing like home. I do feel alone occasionally, I feel this strong urge to come back home, just be with my family and meet you guys everyday.”

I could sense the strength in emotion he was trying to express.

“And I guess it is a little tougher for me to do that, because I have so much fun when I am back home. I get to eat the food of my choice, go out at any time of the day, chill with you guys. But..”

I felt the emotion fading and his logical brain taking over.

“I meet many people who have relocated like I have, and have no intention to travel more than once a year.”

Apparently, talking about or being at home is an “emotional” subject for me.

“Man, who the hell are these people? And how do they exist?”, I asked, my tone filled almost with disgust.

And at that time, I was sort of disgusted. How can these people just leave their homes and go away? Isn’t that selfish? How do you not take care of the people who took care of you?

But my friend’s response gave me a shock, which jolted me back to reality.

“Man, there are people who don’t have as many good friends as we do. Some of them are from smaller cities where there just aren’t as many people, or amenities. For them, the glamour they experience when they are in bigger cities in the world is such a new experience that they find it really hard to be able to get away from it”.

Man, I was really ignorant in that moment, wasn’t I?

I hadn’t seen this facet of life in this light, ever. There are so many people in the world, each having their own experiences, each living their lives from their own points of view. And one thing I concluded after this “casual” interaction with one of my closest friends is

There will always be someone, somewhere who will disagree with you.

No matter how right you think you are, there is someone who has led a different life, and from their standpoint, your approach will never be right.

Does that make them wrong? No.

Does that make you wrong? Absolutely Not.

What matters here is that we listen to, and understand the position the other person is in, respect it, and make the decision that is the best for you in a given situation.

If you stuck around this far, thank you for your time. If you enjoyed this, share this with one friend of yours whom you think will benefit from reading this. Thanks for reading, and I will see you in the next one. 🙂