Thanks to a philosophy assessment last term, I started to think about my principles and unconscious habits that I have. Moral principles are strongly felt principles that compel a person to act and behave a certain way. I realised that one of my principles is my avoidance of confrontation.
One of my less regarded fears is conflict. I hate conflict, whether it be between my friends, family, or even myself. In order to solve this conflict, I must do something that I hate even more – confrontation.
Even though I know the power of confrontation will help resolve a conflict, it scares me knowing that I have the power to make things worse. Whenever I think about confrontation, I always associate it with bad things and think about the negative consequences that confrontation might bring.
Instead of confronting an issue or the problem at hand, I usually ignore the problem. By being silent, I try to avoid the problem and instead, sacrifice myself for the happiness of others.
For example, for the past few months, I’ve realised that my relationship with my friend is being influenced by her relationship with her guy friends. I haven’t talked to her about this, and keep telling myself that ‘I’ll just tell her the next time if it happens again.’ By avoiding the problem, I’ve repeatedly sacrificed my feelings for our friendship. However, this has strained our friendship, because I’m not always honest with her, or clear about what’s bothering me. Sometimes, I even stop talking to her because I overthink things, and convince myself that ‘She’s better off without me.’
While confrontation can be scary and lead to unknown consequences, it also clears the air. By confronting an issue, you can irradicate a problem altogether. By avoiding the issue, it can lead to the problem getting bigger, and the consequences will become worse. An analogy for this could be how pulling a weed from the root kills the weed altogether. However, if you leave the weed, it slowly grows and spreads, making more weeds. The weeds in this analogy are a representation of a problem that needs confrontation.
Confronting an issue is something I need to work on as I grow older, as it can limit me in the long term. We shouldn’t let the fear of confrontation stop us from doing what needs to be done, even if it scares us.