provoke disagreement

📍 Austin, TX

The remote and mysterious Zanskar Vally, Ladakh

Recently, I've been finding joy in appreciating the authenticity of those around me.

But often authenticity, when expressed, isn't quite what I want to hear. It's a No or a Later or a Never. Eugh. So when I'm being told as much, or worse, I reflect that I'm hearing the authentic expression of somebody in touch with their wants, with the space to express them. This framing sweetens the medicine.

Ever since primary school, we’ve been taught that in any situation, there is wrong and a right — good and evil — and that a disagreement, when it floats to the surface, points to somebody being incorrect (so, a little bit evil). When colliding in dispute, I feel threatened: "I am wrong". This is why conflict always sat very uncomfortably with me. After all, who wants to be bad, evil, wrong!?

However, a disagreement exposes two beautiful things:

First, it exposes the counter position from which I stand. People are mostly not wildly crazy — even though they may not corroborate what I'm saying! The counterfactual is usually grounded in reality. What reality? Ask! Their alternative perspective not the one that I'm blessed with (and vice versa). Therefore, any new disagreement exposes a whole magnificent counterfactual universe which I can explore.

Second, our disagreement exposes an authentic, non-people-pleasing dimension. I am gifted somebody's truth. This, when given space, is delicious to unpack.

This morning, I had a disagreement over strategy with my cofounder in a café with dark wood floors, wood-panelled walls, and old wooden chairs. In those clattery acoustics, I could feel the disagreement rising inside of me.

I would, in the past, have pushed back on my cofounder's "wrong" position. He was mistaken, god-damn-it!!! (Oh heck, or maybe I was wrong.) Well, I would have either kicked up a bit of a fuss or ignored the entire topic — my well-worn avoidant tendencies would eventually jettison the conversation.

But this time, I sat with the rush of feelings and gave the void between our positions space to blossom. We rummaged deeper, like clearing a blocked drain, looking for the foundations of each of our perspectives. I wanted to understand why he felt that way. He wanted to know why I was so firm with my pre-conceived arguments (I was convinced that I was, of course, completely correct).

Rather than 'agreeing to disagree' or trying to convince Selman, I decided to dig into the why behind the logic of both of our positions, and it turns out we were never far away.

And actually — shock — there were vast acres of common ground, a whole proverbial Mongolian plateau of things we agreed about. Our dramatic opposition was based on a basic misunderstanding of ourselves.

Unpacking this all now, I realise that a lot of my discontent in life stems from my internal disagreements and subsequent lack of investigation. I make a decision I regret, for example, and then shut down the argument rather than cooly looking into where that inner indecision appears from. I don’t stay open; I close down.

Two sides can be right — both usually are, to some extent. Progress, inner or outer, is from trying to understand the space between and not letting disagreements fester or explode.

Writers should provoke disagreement. — V. S. Naipaul