“The better part of valor is discretion”
-Falstaff, Henry IV, Part I

“Sometimes, when you win, you really lose. And when you lose, you really win. And othertimes you tie.”
-Rosie Perez in White Men Can’t Jump

In college, my friend Nicole had the reputation as a relationship guru. If anyone had a problem with their significant other, she would be the one everyone ended up pouring their hearts out to. Besides being a good listener, Nicole gave great advice. One of her pieces of sagely wisdom was “Pick Your Battles”. She said it often enough where it became eternally etched in my social memory. While this is an excellent piece of well-worn advice, the question becomes: How does one know when to engage in battle? How do you properly access cost/benefit?

In our society, direct confrontation and conflict is frowned upon. Manners, etiquette and other social protocol obstruct what is most important. We become worried with how we will be perceived, than speaking our mind and telling the truth. The result is a society teeming with passive aggressive behavior. The workplace is a perfect example. Everyone has that co-worker they cannot stand. They might be lazy, moody or just plain irritating. And you want so bad to tell them about themselves, but what happens most of the time? People hold it in. And it festers, until something snaps and people go to the extremes. Now that person has you looking look like the crazy person, the bad guy. If it had just been dealt with it when it came up, maybe it would have handled it better.

What it comes down to is that there is a right and a wrong way to handle things. Society ill-equips us to handle conflict or tension. We grow up believing that it is negative. They also do not teach us the difference between being assertive and aggressive. We often must learn the hard way, but the sad part of it all, is that there are people who never learn.

Conflict Adverse

It is essential that we learn to pick our battles. We cannot expect someone else to assert our rights and speak up for us. This requires an assessment of various factors: cost (time, resources), after effects (long-term and short-term), and objectives. We need to decide what addressing this conflict means to us. Is it really a big deal? Is it an annoyance or a serious issue? If it is an annoyance, try to deal with it on your own, and if that does not work, then find an effective means to communicate it. My rule of thumb for picking my battles is to assess where it affects me on my hierarchy of values. If it touches my principles, I cannot let it slide. You have to draw the line in the sand somewhere. Next, if I do let the issue slide, and it bothers me the next day, then I have to speak up also. Following this rule lets me know when something outside has disturbed something on the inside.

Once you decide to address the situation, you need to think about the approach. This is effected by the environment and the nature of opponent/object. Sometimes, getting emotional is not the best way to handle your frustration. Other times, showing a little heat is necessary. You have to know who and what you are dealing with and the constraints on every situation and what you want from all of this. A good example is relationships. Sometimes, your significant other is dead wrong about something, but you let them have their way anyway to keep the peace. Every potential battle is not worth fighting or commenting on. But if you do let it go, let it go for good.

Finally, you must prepare yourself, mentally, physically and spiritually. What if things do not go the way you plan? Can you deal with possibly being criticized, rejected or hurt in retaliation? And it comes down to what is it really worth.

Who begins a work and counteth not the cost.

Don’t sweat the small stuff.

Learn to deal with conflict effectively and constructively. Through struggle, life is made beautiful.

Truth and Peace,
Steven M DeVougas

Question of the Week: What is Worth Fighting for?

July 27th, 2006 | Steve, The Weekly Dream, Relationships | No comments

Superspade family, I am starting a 12-part series dealing with Loneliness, Black men, and Friendships. I think this issue is a silent crisis that is crippling Black men and our ability to forge meaningful relationships with each other while also seriously undermining our coping skills as life presents constant challenges. To be sure, I bounced around the ideas I had for this series with a handful of folks and based off the spirited exchanges, I knew God placed this issue on my heart for a reason.

And while this series will deal exclusively with Black men, it is applicable to a wide range of people. So I encourage men and women to add their thoughts as I am sure the issues discussed will broaden as deep and wide as the glaciers that span the polar ice caps. So to break the ice as it were, I thought I should kick things off with an introduction.

So imagine this, a young Black man in his late twenties to early thirties is preparing to get married. Everything is going fine; he and his fiancée are going through pre-marriage counseling and they joke about how silly it is to compare and contrast the prices for seat covers. So one night, the bride-to-be gives her fiancée the list she compiled for all the bridesmaids she wants to have in the wedding. She asks him what he thinks and her man looks over the list of five bridesmaids and says, (like Eddie Murphy in Raw) “OK.” The bride-to-be then informs her fiancée that he needs to find five groomsmen.

That scenario inspired this whole series because the fact is, most men do not have five best friends they can count on to be groomsmen in their wedding. I know most guys will recruit some family members to fill in the empty spots but for our purposes, let’s assume there will be no family fill-ins even though family can be your friends as well.

Do you have five close male friends you can call on? Really ponder that for a moment.

I surely don’t have five close male friends I could call on and I am sure many other Black men fit this same profile. And let’s not get caught up in semantics here, if you have three Black male friends, I am not saying you need to pick up two more. However, it is imperative that we take a bird’s eye view and understand what is happening to the quantity and quality of our Black male friendships as many of us suffer in silence, no matter the socioeconomic status.

Additionally, the machismo culture we live in has done a number on lessening the quality of Black male friendships as materialism and the quest for women has occupied far too much of our time and resources. You may ask why I keep harping on friendships between Black men, and here’s why. I believe that that when a man can share his hopes, heart, and fears with another man, that avenue empowers the entire community, period.

Moreover, I believe many Black men have learned to depend too much on female friendships to the point where we only feel comfortable sharing our emotions (if we even do that) with women. And as many of you can attest, the plethora of male-female friendships presents a whole range of issues that I will delve into later in the series. So regardless of your personal ratio of male friends to female friends, our community will prove to be so much stronger if we can better negotiate same gender friendships. This is particularly poignant when we can create spaces for Black men that facilitate friendships that are long-lasting, meaningful, and uplifting.

And so we are on the same page, I am coming to grips with my own issues concerning Black male friendships, so this series is less concerned with me coming up with answers rather than asking the right questions. My experiences and observations and conversations throughout my lifetime largely inform this series which means that if you disagree with I am trying to make, please make your presence felt. We all come from different walks from life so I will ask you the reader to help make this mosaic of understanding deeper levels of Black Thought as it concerns, Loneliness, Black Men, and Friendships.

There will be new posts once a week, so watch out for the second part in this series as we explore how Black men can come to grips with the fact that we don’t have many friends without sounding sappy.

Stay up fam,
Brandon

July 27th, 2006 | Brandon, Black Issues, Black Men, Black Women, Friendship, Relationships | 5 comments