“Okay, first of all,” Lou began, “I asked whether it makes a difference in a conflict if one side is in the right and the other in the wrong. So I ask you again: doesn’t that matter?”
“Yes,” Yusuf replied, “it does matter. But not the way you think it does.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Well, Lou,” Yusuf responded measuredly, “have you ever been in a conflict with someone who thought he was wrong?”
Lou thought of Cory and the boardroom meeting with his five mutinous executives.
“No,” he answered coolly. “But that doesn’t mean they’re not.”
“True,” Yusuf agreed. “But you see, no conflict can be solved so long as all parties are convinced they are right. Solution is possible only when at least one party begins to consider how he might be wrong.”
“But what if I’m not wrong!” Lou blurted.
“If you are not wrong, then you will be willing to consider how you might be mistaken.”
“What kind of twisted riddle is that?”
Yusuf smiled. “It only seems like a riddle, Lou, because we are so unaccustomed to considering the impact of what is below our words, our actions, and our thoughts. There are two ways to seize Jerusalem or to engage in almost any other strategy or behavior, as Avi discussed with you. Which means there is a way I can be wrong even if taking Jerusalem is the best—even the right—thing to do. If I don’t remain open to how I might be mistaken in this deeper way, I might live out my life convinced I was on the right side of a given conflict, but I won’t have found lasting solutions.
“The deepest way in which we are right or wrong,” he continued, “is in our way of being toward others. I can be right on the surface—in my behavior or positions—while being entirely mistaken beneath, in my way of being. I might, for example, yell at my kids about the importance of chores and be entirely correct about their importance. However, do you suppose I invite the help and cooperation I am wanting from them when my heart is at war in my yelling?”
Lou’s mind reverted to Cory and to how he had found it difficult to speak a civil word to him for nearly two years.
“So, Lou,” Yusuf continued, “in your conflicts with others, even if you are convinced you have been right in the positions you’ve taken, can you say with confidence that you have also been right in your way of being toward them? Can you say that you have been seeing them as people rather than as objects in your disagreements, and that your heart has therefore been at peace rather than at war toward them?”
Lou, still silent, slumped slightly in his chair. He knew that the answer to this question was obvious to everyone in the room. Not only was his heart not at peace toward others, it seemed too often to revel in interpersonal warfare.
This thought transported him back in memory once more.
Lou had grown up in Athens, New York, a picturesque town located on the Hudson River 120 miles north of Manhattan and 30 miles south of Albany. His father was an apple farmer who worked around the clock seven days a week to eke out a meager living. They lived in a Civil War–era white clapboard farmhouse that sat only fifty yards off the west bank of the Hudson. Their farm was a rather modest ten acres, but it was the prettiest parcel in Greene County, occupying a peninsula that jutted out into the Hudson. From the top floor of the farmhouse, one could see the Catskill Mountains rising above the trees to the west. The setting was so beautiful that Lou’s father could never bring himself to leave, even though he could have run a far grander operation elsewhere.
Through Lou’s youth, the family had owned only one vehicle—a red 1942 farm truck with a matching red four-foot-tall wooden bay on the flatbed. The truck rattled and coughed like a ninety-year-old chain smoker. Lou grew up thinking that the shoulder of the road was merely a second lane, as his father nearly always hugged the grasses that lined the streets in order to let other vehicles pass.
It was no small thing, then, when the Herberts purchased a new car. Lou was sixteen at the time, and he was eager to show the car to his friends in town. The day after his father brought it home, Lou asked if he could take it for some errands. Sensing his son’s excitement, Lou’s father readily agreed.
Lou ran out to the driveway and started it up. The low hum of the engine exhilarated him and he stroked the dash in anticipation. Just then he remembered he had left his wallet in the house and ran in to get it. When he raced back out, to his horror, the car had vanished! Lou remembered his feeling of panic, and then the awful thought that the car might have rolled down the slope of the approach and spilled off the driveway and into the Hudson.
Didn’t I put it back in park? Lou had screamed in his mind as he ran down the drive. Didn’t I set the brake?
Where the lane turned, sure enough, fresh tire tracks headed down the hill toward the river. Lou sprinted to the edge of the bluff and looked some twenty feet down. There looking back at him were the headlights of his father’s car. He stood frozen as the water slowly sucked the car under the surface and out of sight.
Lou remembered walking numbly up to the house, wondering how he could break the news to his father. He entered the farmhouse and saw his father facing away from him in his favorite wingback chair. He was reading the newspaper. For a moment, Lou considered quietly exiting, and his mind raced with thoughts of running away.
“Forget something else?” his father had asked without turning around.
“No,” Lou had responded, feeling cornered. There was no avoiding it now, as his father knew he was in the house. There was nowhere to hide.
“Dad,” he had said, his voice breaking. “I—” He couldn’t go on. “I—”
He gasped for air and the courage to tell what happened.
“Dad, I—the car—” he stammered as his chest heaved between words. “I think I must have forgotten to set the brake,” he blurted. “It’s in the river, Dad. The car is in the river! I’m so sorry,” he said, bursting into sobs. “I’m so sorry!”
What happened next seared itself so deeply into Lou’s memory he was sure that should he ever get Alzheimer’s or some similar disease, this would be the last memory to leave him.
He remembered trembling while waiting for his father to respond. His father didn’t turn to him but still sat holding the newspaper wide before him. He then slowly reached his left hand to the top corner of the right-hand page and turned it to continue reading. And then he said it, the sentence Lou would never forget. He said, “Well, I guess you’ll have to take the truck then.”
As Lou remembered this, he sat stunned anew. There had been no retribution, no lecture, no visible anger. Just, “Well, I guess you’ll have to take the truck then.”
Lou realized in this moment that his father’s heart was at peace toward Lou, a peace so powerful that it couldn’t be interrupted even by a provocation so great as the sudden loss of a hard-earned car. Perhaps in his wisdom he knew Lou was now the last person who would ever put another car into the river. Perhaps in that instant he divined that a lecture would serve no purpose, and to start one would only hurt an already hurting son.
An already hurting son. Lou reeled at the thought. He had one of those too but had rarely spared the lecture. What have I become? he wondered silently. Why do I turn so quickly to war?
“I’ve seen him when he’s that way, Yusuf,” Carol said, her voice pulling Lou back from the trouble of his thoughts. “I’ve seen Lou when his heart is at peace. Many times, actually.”
Lou turned to her, his mouth opening slightly in grateful surprise.
“Lou can be warm and helpful—despite what you’ve seen during much of today,” she added, apologetically. After a moment’s pause, she said, “Can I share a story?”
“Please,” nodded Yusuf.
“Before that,” she began, “I need to apologize to you, Miguel. It was unkind what I said earlier, about Ria having to do everything. It was terribly inconsiderate and presumptuous of me. I’m so sorry. I hope you can forgive me.”
Miguel cleared his throat. “No worries,” he smiled. “Forgot all about it.”
“Thank you,” Carol said. “I’m so sorry.”
She turned back to the group. “Okay, so the story,” she continued. “This won’t be easy for me. I’ve never shared this with anyone, except Lou and one other person I’ll tell you about. But I’m thinking it might be helpful for you—for everyone here—to hear this.
“For years in our marriage,” she continued, “I carried a secret. I was bulimic. And I was ashamed about it. I didn’t want to let Lou down or to risk losing him or his love. So I never told him. Then something happened that awoke me to the possibility that I might be killing myself—not just emotionally and psychologically but physically as well. I had been severely fatigued for a long time and finally went to see my doctor about it. She ran lots of tests and then asked me point-blank whether I had an eating disorder. At first I denied it. But when she showed me the test results and told me that my body was breaking down and that my health and perhaps even my life was at risk, I finally broke down myself. I told her the truth between sobs.
“But then came the hard part. I knew I had to tell Lou because this problem had morphed way beyond merely a physical ailment. I needed his help, and I couldn’t go on keeping such a secret from him daily even if I didn’t. So I told him, deathly worried that it might be the beginning of the end of our marriage.
“But it wasn’t like that. I think he was hurt by the secret keeping, but he didn’t dwell on it. At least, not that I know of. His concern for me was immediate and overwhelming. I don’t think I’ve ever been so grateful for anyone in my life as I was for him in that moment and the months that followed. We agreed that I would report to him every night about how I had done during the day. There were many days that I had to report meekly to him that I had stumbled. But stumble or not, he gently rubbed my back until I went to sleep. Somewhere amid the back rubs and his nonjudgmental listening to my troubles, my compulsion eventually left me. I haven’t even been tempted toward bulimia since that time, which is now many years ago.”
As Carol shared her story, the atmosphere in the room began changing. Lou’s face, which for much of the morning had been creased with impatience and acrimony, had softened. Carol herself seemed to come alive with a kind of personal conviction and confidence. And finally, Gwyn—Lou’s most bitter rival to this point—had relaxed for the first time in an hour. The tension had drained from her face and limbs, and she leaned forward in interest rather than in belligerence. Elizabeth too seemed to be carrying herself differently, her earlier dispassionate air having given way to concentrated attention. She listened intently to Carol.
“Anyway,” Carol finished up. “I thought it might help to share that story. He’s far from perfect,” she said, with a gentle grin, “but fundamentally he’s a good man. That’s why I wanted to marry him and why I’m still glad about that, despite the challenge we sometimes are for each other.”
Lou hung his head a bit. Some might have thought he had tired of attention that in the end must have seemed too effusive for his taste. In reality, however, he was feeling shame. He remembered well the experience Carol had related, but he knew he too rarely lived up to that ideal.
“Thank you, Carol, for sharing that,” Yusuf said. “It’s a wonderful story. Thank you.”
Carol nodded.
“Gwyn,” he continued, “I’m curious. What did hearing that story do for you?”
Gwyn was caught off guard by the question and collected herself for a moment before responding. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Did it influence your impression at all of Lou?”
Gwyn thought about that for a moment. “I suppose it did somewhat, yes.”
“Elizabeth?” Yusuf asked. “How about you? Did the story do anything for you?”
Elizabeth looked over at Lou for a moment before responding. “Yes, it did,” she said.
“What did it do?”
She looked back at Yusuf. “It reminded me of someone,” she answered softly, not volunteering more.
“So do the two of you now think that Lou was right in everything he has said today?”
“No,” Gwyn said quickly, but without the edge that had been in her voice before.
“Oh, I don’t know that I have been thinking Lou has been entirely wrong,” Elizabeth said. “I suppose I’ve been finding him interesting, let’s put it that way.”
“I think I’d rather be wrong,” Lou joked.
“Yes, well, you haven’t been entirely right either,” she said.
“That feels much better,” Lou cracked.
“So how about you, Lou?” Yusuf asked. “Do you now think that Gwyn has been right, for example, and that you have been wrong?”
“No, sir.” The formality surprised everyone, including Lou.
“But when do you think the two of you would be more able to resolve any differences you might have, right now or thirty minutes ago?”
They glanced quickly at each other. “Now, I suppose,” Lou answered.
Gwyn nodded in agreement.
“Why is that, do you think?” Yusuf asked. “You still don’t agree with the other person’s positions, so why do you suppose you’d be more able now than before to find solutions?”
Pettis spoke up. “It’s what you and Avi have been talking about: Carol’s story humanized Lou, I think. And, I don’t know, maybe for Lou, hearing the story with us humanized the group a bit. In your words, I think we’re seeing others in the room as people more than we might have been before.”
“Yes,” Yusuf agreed. “And that seems to make a difference, doesn’t it?”
Pettis and the rest of the group nodded their heads.
“So if we are going to find lasting solutions to difficult conflicts or external wars we find ourselves in,” Yusuf said, “we first need to find our way out of the internal wars that are poisoning our thoughts, feelings, and attitudes toward others. If we can’t put an end to the violence within us, there is no hope for putting an end to the violence without.”
“Then how do you?” Pettis asked.
“In order to understand how to improve our peace,” Yusuf answered, “we first must understand how and why we have turned toward war. But it’s now past lunchtime.”
Everyone in the room looked at their watches almost in unison. They were surprised by the time.
“Let’s break for lunch and meet back here at 2:00 p.m. Then we’ll get into how our hearts have turned from peace to war. Fair enough?”
Everyone nodded.
“One quick thing before you go. While you are out, I challenge you to see everyone you encounter as a person—the driver in the car next to you, the person who waits on you at whatever restaurant you go to, your spouse or partner you are with, and so on. Make a point of seeing others over the next ninety minutes as people and see what happens as a result.
“Fair enough?”
The group, now beginning to stand, nodded.
“Oh, and Teri and Carl,” Yusuf called. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
As Lou was leaving the room, he heard Yusuf say to them, “Your daughter, Jenny—”
“Yes?”