Are we fighting with people. Are we fighting against people.
What if there was another completely different vantage point. What if we might fight for people.
Fighting with people has us choosing sides, using either/or language and sometimes blindly acquiescing in ways that are not beneficial to anyone.
Fighting against people also polarizes and separates, creating divides and a conquer and a take all kind of thinking. No one wins.
And often, with each of these options on opposing ends of a continuum we bounce back and forth between fight with and fighting against.
Sometimes we are fighting with and sometimes we are fighting against. Bi-polar in our positions we are not stable people, our life manner cannot be counted on, we swing from one way to the other depending on who we are with, depending on what buttons they are pushing in us, and depending on our frame of mind on any given day.
Might I suggest this is a crazy way to be in the world. And yet, how else might we do this?
Well, in contrast to either of these two ends of a continuum the servant-leader (and anyone can be one of these) brings those two opposite ends of the continuum up and around joining the two polarities, creating something brand new.
Instead of with or against, we have for. Fighting for others is a much different entity.
It is a place whereby we are in fact for people. We hold ourselves in honor to others, we give benefit of the doubt while simultaneously giving push back.
Fighting for others requires that we bring a lot more of us to the table, than fighting with or against ever does.
Fighting for requires that we have the best interest of those we are serving at heart. It requires a bigger picture kind of thinking, a life that seeks to be part of the solution and not part of the problem, and that quite simply breathes life instead of death.
It doesn’t mean we won’t disagree; we will.
Yet fighting for is a strong place. It does not require acquiescence, it does not create false fronts, and because of this only in fighting for can we engage true unity.
Fighting with or against are both passive states that masquerade as action, they look alive and meaningful, but its all a ruse.
It is so much easier after all to take a polarized position than to truly enter into the dirty messes of reality and invest in listening, and humility, and seeing things differently than we have ever seen them before.
Only in fighting for do we really engage all the difficulties and the uncountable realities, only in fighting for are we part of the solution, and only in fighting for are we able to truly serve those around us.
Cyndy Lavoie 