Dirty Laundry

The joke is that because there is no TV on the commune, we create our own soap operas. Even if the proposed origin is incorrect, we certainly have a propensity to rumble emotionally within the bounds of our intense experiment.

Hawina and i have been doing mediation's are a party which went out of control some months back, and the most recent one we did, i was quite worried about. I was afraid because i had worked with both of the people we were mediating with before on romantic relationships stuff and while i care for both of them deeply, i knew that they can both be hard headed and also that the stakes were quite high for this mediation. If we blew it, the cost of failure could potentially be quite high - derailing our hopes of resolving the issues in a one on one basis and instead going to a community level feedback, which would even more certainly go badly.

On top of this, when i had talked to my friend who is aptly named after a volcano goddess a couple of days before the mediation about my concerns, we had ended up spiraling out of control and screaming at each other. Which is pretty rare for me.

And it worked out well, better than well actually it was something of a breakthru. Hawina and i were good, but we never would have made it were it not for the somewhat uncharacteristic vulnerability and compassion of the two people in dialog brought with them.

We went for two hours, voices got raised slightly, but overall everyone kept it under control. What Hawina is good at is getting people to take responsibility for their part of the problem. And in this case that was at the core of the disconnect. And we got there. Having worked on this for some months now, we heard new things in the mediation, self reflections which change the nature of the conversation and make more be possible.

And i realized as i came out of the mediation that this is still some of my favorite work. Helping people communicate, move thru obstacles and mend splits in the community. And especially when we succeed, i am proud of the entire operation. It was a good day for understanding and compassion.