Picking Your Battles

Humans are essentially conflict-seeking creatures. Even the tamest of humans are, to some extent, attracted to conflict. Even the tame human is attracted to second-hand conflict - those told in stories, seen on TV, created within the mind. Life is impossible and untenable without conflict.

Conflict is not limited to actual, physical or verbal disagreement, as the word commonly implies. Conflict occurs much more often than one expects. It is whether one chooses to stay home or go out, to get pizza, a burger or nothing. It is whether one agrees or disagrees with someone else's opinion about a brand of soap.

Some people say they choose to avoid conflict. They outwardly agree to what others say even though they may disagree inside. While this form of outward agreement is at times necessary, done often enough, it ruins self-esteem, for it communicates to the self that one's opinion is less important than others.

This is not to say that one should always seek conflict. Much time is wasted in human life dealing with useless and pointless conflicts. These includes involving oneself in the emotional battles of others, squabbling about petty matters, making big things about essentially nothing.

This kind of conflict seeking simply wastes energy and that great irreplaceable resource, time. It ties up resources that could best be allocated elsewhere; it creates battles that lead nowhere. It distracts from the main battles of life. One should seek to bypass these kinds of conflict as much as possible.

One should put oneself not above it, as that implies a self superior attitude to life that breeds nothing but arrogance; instead, one should view it from afar, observing it only as a curiosity, an ambient event to one's life, TV in the background.

Instead, in this writer's opinion, one should focus only on the things that moves the self forward, the conflicts that need to be fought. These conflicts occur at the forefront of one's life, the frontlines. As so happens, these are the conflicts that are often avoided, for these are the hardest ones to fight. They will require the greatest effort, take the most resources, the most of one's time, and will likely cause damage to oneself in trying to address it.

However, these conflicts must be tackled. While others distract and tire themselves on the banal, the petty and the ultimately pointless, one must always keep their sights centered on the battles that must be fought, and allocate all resource on winning these pivotal battles.