Reckless Mediation
For Fools Rush In Where Angels Fear To Tread...
There was a blogpost up for a brief amount of time yesterday where a blogger on my sidebar absolutely cut loose on another one. No names, and I'll excise any tattletales in the comments. If you missed it, you missed it.
I for one was glad to see comments disabled on the post. One of my bad habits is to immediately try to apply the El Capitan Spatula Of Mutually Respectful Discourse to try and smooth over the rough cracks that have suddenly emerged on the emotional landscape.
That the Spatula almost invariably ends up rammed up my arse sideways by one or the other (or both) of the participants by the end of the donnybrook is a fact that somehow I keep forgetting.
It's been a lesson that took many painful years to learn, and I'll hand it to you for free.
When two friends are at odds with each other, it almost always does no good to try and step in the middle, no matter how desperately you want to help.
Axiom: The longer and/or more intimate the relationship between the arguing pair, the less business you have trying to mediate, or even offer advice.
Corollary to the axiom: Your chances of coming out with skin and relationships unscarred after sticking your nose in unasked lie in direct proportion to the length of your relationship with BOTH the participants. For your sake, this had better be measured in decades.
I don't want to sound like I'm washing my hands of the situation. I'm not. It's upsetting, and I grieve for the loss of harmonious accord between the two. From my experience, though, venturing in where you're not asked is akin to walking into a minefield blindfolded while wearing concrete snowshoes. Long-buried skeletons litter the field, and an unwary misstep can unearth or detonate dormant issues that would have best been left alone.
No matter how good a friend you are, think you are, or want to be, you aren't privy to even a fraction of the relationship. Even if you're not immediately told to bugger off and MYOB, you are often urged to choose a side, and you sometimes end up defending unconscionable behavior in order to not "betray" a friend.
For now, I can only pray for a mutually equitable solution to be worked out between them, and hope that both participants understand why I didn't immediately offer up $2 worth of free advice.
Agree? Disagree? Comments are open...
There was a blogpost up for a brief amount of time yesterday where a blogger on my sidebar absolutely cut loose on another one. No names, and I'll excise any tattletales in the comments. If you missed it, you missed it.
I for one was glad to see comments disabled on the post. One of my bad habits is to immediately try to apply the El Capitan Spatula Of Mutually Respectful Discourse to try and smooth over the rough cracks that have suddenly emerged on the emotional landscape.
That the Spatula almost invariably ends up rammed up my arse sideways by one or the other (or both) of the participants by the end of the donnybrook is a fact that somehow I keep forgetting.
It's been a lesson that took many painful years to learn, and I'll hand it to you for free.
When two friends are at odds with each other, it almost always does no good to try and step in the middle, no matter how desperately you want to help.
Axiom: The longer and/or more intimate the relationship between the arguing pair, the less business you have trying to mediate, or even offer advice.
Corollary to the axiom: Your chances of coming out with skin and relationships unscarred after sticking your nose in unasked lie in direct proportion to the length of your relationship with BOTH the participants. For your sake, this had better be measured in decades.
I don't want to sound like I'm washing my hands of the situation. I'm not. It's upsetting, and I grieve for the loss of harmonious accord between the two. From my experience, though, venturing in where you're not asked is akin to walking into a minefield blindfolded while wearing concrete snowshoes. Long-buried skeletons litter the field, and an unwary misstep can unearth or detonate dormant issues that would have best been left alone.
No matter how good a friend you are, think you are, or want to be, you aren't privy to even a fraction of the relationship. Even if you're not immediately told to bugger off and MYOB, you are often urged to choose a side, and you sometimes end up defending unconscionable behavior in order to not "betray" a friend.
For now, I can only pray for a mutually equitable solution to be worked out between them, and hope that both participants understand why I didn't immediately offer up $2 worth of free advice.
Agree? Disagree? Comments are open...
posted by El Capitan | 1:37 PM
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