Life is filled with challenges. You must find a way to consistently get food and shelter. You must be able to travel to places that you need to go and you must find ways to have rest and enjoyment. Without each of these things, it cannot be considered that you are actually living. If you get a lot of these things you might consider yourself to be having a good life.
Throughout this life we are met with challenges that we must overcome. There is lack of money, finding a mate, having and raising children and illness that will happen to all of us and those me know and love.
We must find ways to deal with all of these issues and remain productive or we will simply slide into dis-ease and lowered functioning.
Most of us can do this. Sometimes it takes a little hep, but we make it through and learn how to meet these challenges. Thank God.
But along with all of this there are the bigger challenges that each of us face. We do not live alone. We live in a world inhabited by different types of people. Some are similar to us and others are very different. They have different cultures, different religious beliefs, different looks and different ways of approaching life.
Our needing to interact with them will cause us to be inconvenienced and at times completely confused. It may also cause us to be fearful of losing our own beliefs and loves. These feelings have led to wars and arguments and today it continues. In nearly every corner of the world there is fighting based on religion, skin color, political systems or culture. Everyone feels put upon and the need to strike out or strike back. The result is that we are at a low point in terms of unity and it seems like we are getting farther away from each other as a planet.
At the same time we have major challenges that are not being sufficiently addressed. Things like climate change, debilitating diseases, water shortages, pollution, needless wars, child abuse, and many other important issues get pushed aside causing all of us to suffer and to potentially negatively affect our futures.
The truth is however that none of life's big problems can be solved without our working together.
Conflicts are natural. If you have two people who are even close friends or family they will disagree. But disagreements should never cause us to stop communication because the issues are too important. Disagreements give us an opportunity to look at the other person and ourselves and questions our own motivations ang goals. is it more important to win an argument or maintain a friendship? What good is being right if you destroy and important relationship?
If you ask me, relationships are more important than winning an argument, and nearly anything else. Because for important issues you always need multiple points of view and multiple minds to solve them.
For those of you who work in a close team setting or play competitive team sports, you understand. You might hate your team mate but you must learn to appreciate and work with that person or you simply cannot meet your goal.
Another things to consider is the the process of disagreeing and working through it causes us each to grow and get smarter, wiser and simply better. We walk away with a better understanding of things and more prepared to take on new challenges. when we shut people down and don't listen the exact opposite happens.
With this in mind I encourage you to focus on relationship building and on working with others to solve big problems. Some of these people might be very different and you might not support all of their views, but they might have answers that work when combined with yours. In the end you might find common ground solve big problems and make new friends.
Give it a try. The world needs you.