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Mahatma Ghandi was in a South African prison for resisting the British laws of racial segregation. He understood class empowerment very well. His native India embraced those prejudices long before the English marched in. His keen legal mind smarted at the injustice and in that cell he turned to the only book the jailers allowed him to read: the Bible.
Ghandi later related how the teachings of Christ became a major part of his ideas on passive resistance. He learned that meekness isn't weakness. He whom the Indians named "the Great Soul" took on the British occupying forces and resisted with no balled fists. His followers saw an empire blanch before them.
50 years ago Martin Luther King Jr studied the teachings of Ghandi. He had his own Goliath to counter. From Jesus, but through Ghandi and King the 20th Century saw the power of resistance via minimum force. What if someone has done you wrong? That which repealed the Jim Crow laws will work for you. I'm not speaking here of criminal activity – our police are trained to handle that. Let us ponder the myriad of church, office and family breakdowns between people. It starts with your personal evaluation of the wrong. You need to avoid the knee jerk reaction of hurt pride and flared anger. Take time to consider what they did to hurt you. Time will cool your spite, but it might also weaken your courage. Think soberly here. Only, keep this to yourself.
Speaking to all whom will listen, and even a few reluctant ones about the conflict
will hurt everyone in the long term.
So now you have carefully thought through what they did to injure you. Its time for the one-on-one conversation. Go somewhere nice. A telephone call hardly ever works. Make sure neither of you is rushed. Interruptions won't help either. More than half of the conflicts you experience will be solved this way.
News Flash: not everyone sees what happened exactly the same way you replay the events inside your head. Its possible that after a long, earnest conversation your adversary in the conflict will maintain they were right to act the way they did. Quietly end the discussion with a promise to return. It is now permissible to involve one or two others.
Here maturity is expected of you. The idea isn't to grab a few pals, fill their heads with your side of the story and then lead a posse to the hanging tree. My wife maintains that there are at least 3 sides to every conflict: your side, mine and the truth. Take a risk. Lay out the complaint in the presence of your attacker as well as one or two objective arbiters who are hearing the complexities of the "crime" for the first time. Some aspects of the hurt you experienced might be completely of your own manufacture. If that is shown to you apologize forthwith. Oh oh – I know some readers are bristling at this point. You must see that this is not about being right so much as about being reconciled. If you just want to feel revenge save time and buy a baseball bat.
Should you come away from the meeting having been vindicated by the opinions of the objective listeners, but still in the position where the one who pained you refuses to admit their wrong, its time for the next step. Go to the person in charge of the company, family, club or whatever the setting was in which this conflict arose. Allow the witnesses who were part of the previous attempt at reconciliation to speak on your behalf. Have them ask for an effort at putting things right at the highest level. I know this sounds like a slow process. It’s supposed to be. On the way up the "scale" you get time to consider carefully how big the injury really was that you believe you suffered. Junk lawsuits are expensive substitutes that bite the hand that feeds them. In all this remember the part of the prayer:
"Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us."
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