Fighting

Devang and I just saw The Namesake, last night, the new and best of the movies, I think, by Mira Nair, the brilliant and often controversial Indian director.

It's a beautiful movie about culture and aspirations, about an Indian Ph.D. student studying in New York who brings his bride in an arranged marriage to America to learn how to live in the land of opportunity. It is a beautiful film that spans a lifetime of living, growing up, raising children, watching them grow up and live their own lives, and all in the context of a Bengali family trying to find their way in America and its bountiful promise.

I realized both watching the movie and reflecting over the lifetime of the Ashoke Ganguli, the father and lead character in the movie, and reflecting over the course of my own life and especially this last year that most of our more serious conflicts in life occur as much around the fight and winning fights as much as around the issue we are upset about or concerned about. It's foolishness is what it is. It's fighting that creates its own problems. At best it achieves reactive problem solving, and at worst it creates entrenchment and counterproductive results.

Most of our most serious political issues remain unresolved as a function of the fighting and the more aggressive means of enforcing solutions rather than thoughtful and collaborative problem solving that patiently takes time to discuss and brainstorm and revisit ideas as we go along. So much of our lives are lost in this this hopeless speeding train of activity without thought and engagement and brainstorming and open-ended and more honest conversation. We are all so scared of having the difficult conversations,the politics, religion, and sex conversations that our parents and friends all warned us about, thinking that thoughtful exploration of issues is giving ground and losing face. We're scared that taking time and patiently walking through difficult issues and generating collaborative ideas and problem-solving, of having on-going conversations without immediate need for resolution somehow betrays our need to take action and solve problems right now rather than when more thoughtful discussion has taken place. We are all so convinced that people are just not smart enough or willing enough or interested enough in such problem solving. Often they may not be. But my commitment, now, is to engage them and take the risk and find out. I'm tired of being scared of peoples' fears or indecision or confusion or unwillingness to have such conversations. I'm completely convinced, at this point, that this is the only place where the problem solving can happen.

And watching that movie I realize that I want solutions in my lifetime, not just left on a blog or in a book or an article for someone else to solve. I want work done on them before I'm not here anymore and someone else has to take over.

And I'm tired of the stupid and incessant fighting that is persistently blocking up better understanding and solutions to our most serious problems. I want something better because this clearly does not work.

We have recycling to do.

Love,
Ben