{"id":2545,"date":"2012-06-24T09:30:04","date_gmt":"2012-06-24T14:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.womens-spirituality.com\/?p=2545"},"modified":"2012-06-15T09:30:48","modified_gmt":"2012-06-15T14:30:48","slug":"choosing-to-be-peaceful-is-a-good-choice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.womens-spirituality.com\/?p=2545","title":{"rendered":"Choosing to be peaceful is a good choice. . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

IN EVERY CONFLICT, ASK, \u201cWOULD I RATHER BE PEACEFUL OR RIGHT?<\/strong>\u201dI was raised by a father who always insisted he was right.\u00a0 Perhaps you were too.\u00a0 It became my nature, even as a youngster, to fight him at every opportunity.\u00a0 I felt like it was my job to defend the family against his certainty that there was one way to see every thing, and it was his way.\u00a0 He and I battled for years while my mother, approvingly, looked on.\u00a0 Over politics, religion, even music and the mundane too, like which television shows worth watching.\u00a0 We were on opposite sides of every issue that was raised.\u00a0 Even after I married and moved away, the disagreements continued.\u00a0 They had become habitual.<\/p>\n

I am grateful that I gradually learned how to give up the fight to be right.\u00a0 For so many reasons I am grateful.\u00a0 For one, my father and I were able to have a few peaceful years before he died.\u00a0 Because I had been introduced to the idea that anger of any kind is rooted in fear, this allowed me to see him in a whole new way.\u00a0 His anger wasn\u2019t really at me, ever, it was at any one who thought differently.\u00a0 His insecurities simply demanded\u00a0 that others agree.<\/p>\n

I was overwhelmed by the power of his fear when I interviewed him for a family of origin class I was taking early in my recovery.\u00a0 He said at that time that he had gone to work afraid, every day of his life<\/strong>; afraid he would make a mistake that would cost the bank money and destroy his good reputation.\u00a0 I was stunned by his comment.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t imagine how it must have felt to show up for work every day, afraid.\u00a0 And even though this conversation occurred some years after his retirement from the bank, he was still that same man, still afraid and still quite certain that his way of seeing the world was the right way.<\/p>\n

I felt truly sad for him for the first time in my life, at that moment.\u00a0 I could see him as he really was, not the ogre I had made him out to be.\u00a0 Fear is so debilitating.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t allow for clarity of thinking.\u00a0 It generally doesn\u2019t allow for openness to new ideas.\u00a0 Living in a restricted frame of mind is safest when fear is your constant companion.\u00a0 I am amazed at the many successes my dad actually had considering how fearful he was. He had obviously pushed himself to excel in spite of his daily struggles with fear.<\/p>\n

The choice to be peaceful rather than right doesn\u2019t actually mean that one\u2019s opinion is unimportant.\u00a0 In fact, one\u2019s particular opinion may make more sense in the larger scheme of things.\u00a0 Rather it means that letting go of the battle is far more sensible, that expecting to change another person\u2019s mind is generally sheer folly.\u00a0 I would have to credit Al-Anon with strengthening this resolve in me.\u00a0 The power of detachment, the willingness to choose to be peaceful rather than making every conversation a battleground, is freedom at its very best. There is no mystery in how this is done.\u00a0 It\u2019s a decision that any one of us can make as many times a day as the opportunity to disagree comes up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IN EVERY CONFLICT, ASK, \u201cWOULD I RATHER BE PEACEFUL OR RIGHT?\u201dI was raised by a father who always insisted he was right.\u00a0 Perhaps you were too.\u00a0 It became my nature, even as a youngster, to fight him at every opportunity.\u00a0 I felt like it was my job to defend the family against his certainty that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections-in-the-mirror-you-and-yourself"],"yoast_head":"\nChoosing to be peaceful is a good choice. . . | Karen Casey<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.womens-spirituality.com\/?p=2545\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Choosing to be peaceful is a good choice. . . | Karen Casey\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"IN EVERY CONFLICT, ASK, \u201cWOULD I RATHER BE PEACEFUL OR RIGHT?\u201dI was raised by a father who always insisted he was right.\u00a0 Perhaps you were too.\u00a0 It became my nature, even as a youngster, to fight him at every opportunity.\u00a0 I felt like it was my job to defend the family against his certainty that […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.womens-spirituality.com\/?p=2545\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Karen Casey\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-06-24T14:30:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"karencasey\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"karencasey\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.womens-spirituality.com\\\/?p=2545#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.womens-spirituality.com\\\/?p=2545\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"karencasey\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.womens-spirituality.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/be42ec49697eba07d84ddf86ace97639\"},\"headline\":\"Choosing to be peaceful is a good choice. . .\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-06-24T14:30:04+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.womens-spirituality.com\\\/?p=2545\"},\"wordCount\":569,\"commentCount\":3,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.womens-spirituality.com\\\/#organization\"},\"articleSection\":[\"Reflections in the Mirror - 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