NICK WRIGHT
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On a knife edge

7/5/2020

16 Comments

 
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‘A clash between two people doesn’t mean either one is bad. Show some understanding and tolerance, unless they are a serial killer…in which case, run.’ (Stephanie Davies)

A close friend in the Philippines heard a sharp disturbance outside today. Two neighbours were engaged in a knife fight. It started over one person showing rations she had received, during lockdown, to another. The other, worried for her own family facing starvation, took it as an insult, as bragging, and flew at her. This Filipina stepped into the affray, held a safer space between them, and calmed them down. I asked what on earth possessed her to do it. She said, ‘They were acting out of desperation, out of fear.’ She gave the aggrieved party what little cash she herself had left. The woman burst into tears. She could now buy food for her baby. Enough to survive. Life is hard-edged for the poor.

Here’s a Malaysian friend, this time in Cambodia and well before the lockdown started. He’s the manager of a hotel chain and locked in a dispute with staff. This friend knows he has to hold his ground but things are tense and risk getting out of control. He invites the trade union leader to meet him in his office, to see if they can negotiate a way forward. The leader arrives, sits down, places a loaded pistol and two hand grenades on the desk, and says, ‘OK, let’s talk.’ Now I’ve faced some tough negotiations in my time but none that come close to that. I asked what he did. My friend replied, ‘I stood fast. I figured that, if he had intended to kill me, he would have done it already.’

Such accounts and experiences certainly put my own work and life into perspective. I’m rarely placed in situations where tensions are anywhere near that high, or where I’m called upon to show such stark courage in the face of real danger. In the first instance, the Filipina responded with empathy for both pro- and antagonist. She saw beyond their actions to the real people, to the deep anxieties that lay behind their drama. In the second, the manager interpreted the encoded meaning behind his counterpart’s actions, reading the cultural messages and signals it pointed towards. When have you found yourself having to respond urgently to a crisis? How did you do it? What happened?
16 Comments
Paul
8/5/2020 02:33:45 pm

In the Philippines Nick such nuisances are quite common. It's occurrence are compounded by unfair distribution of government assistance and raging tempers brought about by the tropical heat inside cramped living spaces and the perennial inadequate water supply. What isn't a familiar sight is a brave soul trying to mediate, much less a woman at that. Offering something to the two protagonists reminds me of Solomon: Man of Wisdom, Man of Foolishness (1 Kings 1-11)

Reply
Nick Wright
8/5/2020 04:30:23 pm

Hi Paul and thank you for sharing your reflections from within the Filipino context. Yes, I imagine that so many compounding factors must be making life incredibly hard at the moment, especially for the poorest people. I like your comment vis a vis Solomon. This woman reminds me of Jesus - the ultimate Mediator. I asked her how she managed to keep a safe social distance in the midst of a knife fight. She just gave me 'that' look. I'm not sure I would have that courage or the willingness to risk self-sacrifice in that situation.

Reply
Max Timm
8/5/2020 04:52:10 pm

In one of your recent blogs you mentioned "just do it". This is exactly what happened here. Without thinking much about the possible consequences, she intervened in the dispute and achieved the best result for everyone! By trusting herself and God.

Reply
Nick Wright
8/5/2020 05:07:24 pm

Hi Max. Yes I think that's true. When I have seen this woman intervene similarly in the past and have asked her afterwards, 'What were you thinking?', she typically responds with something like, 'I wasn't thinking. I saw a need. I responded to it.' On this theme, you may find a couple of short related pieces interesting?

http://www.nick-wright.com/blog/a-counterintuitive-moment
http://www.nick-wright.com/blog/lateral-instinct

Reply
Ian Henderson
11/5/2020 10:19:33 am

Now, that's what I call courage 101.

Reply
Nick Wright
11/5/2020 10:20:18 am

Thanks Ian. Me too! 😳

Reply
E.G. (Erv) Sebastian - CPC, CSL
14/5/2020 07:05:37 am

I got softer in recent years and I do get a slight stomach cramp when I'm around belligerent people... I also have more to lose...

I grew up surrounded by violence - mostly fist-fights ("fist," meaning kicking, beating up someone with a 2x4, or whatever one could get their hands on). Up till age 17 I fought in the streets almost daily. It was such a normal part of my days as for other kids is playing nintendo. At 17 I started practicing martial arts (6 times a week, 2-hour workouts) and it must have changed the way I walked and "looked" - the attacks stopped like it was cut off with a scissor... After that, I fought only 2 to 3 times a year to defend others. [That was the beauty of living in a country without guns - we could fight and tell about it.]

I still can be super-composed in really messy circumstances; and I'm also pretty good at taking charge, which is great as others usually are in panic-mode and appreciate someone telling them what to do...

[sorry, drank a beer... my 2nd beer this year :) It feels good to remember the good old times :) since I rarely drink, one beer is plenty enough to make me tipsy and nostalgic 🙄]

Reply
Nick Wright
14/5/2020 09:41:15 am

Hi Erv. I can’t (don’t want) to begin to imagine what it must have been like to grow up in such a violent environment. 🥺 It puts my own (modestly) violent-by-comparison childhood in the North East of England into perspective. In fact, I’m reading a book at the moment, trying to make sense of why this area/culture feels always to be on a war-footing, even when there is no war.

You...and your remarkable life story...have some similarities in my mind with Bruce Lee: http://www.nick-wright.com/blog/re-enter-the-dragon. In fact, you came to mind as I wrote that piece after avidly watching all 50 episodes of The Legend of Bruce Lee on Netflix recently. ☀️

My own background, similarly although not so dramatically, had a profound influence on my whole outlook on and felt sense of purpose in life. I don’t think it’s coincidence that I became intensely focused on anti-Nazi and other political and human rights work, trying to stop or prevent people and communities being “bullied” and brutalised. That same spirit and passion stays with me in my work and life until today.

Perhaps the biggest crisis I faced was how to deal with my own fears.

Reply
E.G. (Erv) Sebastian - CPC, CSL
14/5/2020 02:26:00 pm

Nick, the first slap on my face was super-traumatic (hmmm... maybe that's the wrong word - it was super-shocking), and I knew that they little bastard will be in Big BIG trouble... I knew that my mom will beat the shi# out of him...

I was 6-years-old when we moved to a large neighborhood (projects?) with dozens of loooong 5-story buildings, each with 100s of families; and a few 11-level buildings... every day 100s of kids playing outside, from morning till night.

Our building was right by the fields (lucky me - really - I loved nature and spent hours daily roaming the fields, hunting frogs, making friends with stray dogs...); and one day I found a cool stick, and as I returned towards our building, this kid - probably shorter than me... might have even been younger than me, tried to take my stick, but I really loved it, so I didn't want to give it. So he slapped me in the face really hard and took the stick... I cried and ran home, told my mom. I was so full of anger and was so SO looking forward to see my mom beat the kid... "You'll find another stick... next time run away from him..."

Oh, lody lody...
what a disappointment...

But it got easier day after day, and after a while fighting (or running away) became the norm.

There were two main gangs in the " 'hood": romanians and hungarians... I got beat up by both regularly... and you know what they say, if you can't bet them, join them :) - during the years I was a member of both... at times at the same time; when the hungarians found out about my "double coat," tied me to an electric pole and whipped me. That beating was one of the least impactful event of my childhood :) If I could go back and change 20 things in my childhood, the street violence would not be one of them (family life was way harder, and school - where teachers could beat you for mispronouncing a word or for picking your nose - all my 20 wishes would be family and school related - both were way more traumatic than the streets).

Nick Wright
14/5/2020 04:09:18 pm

Wow, Erv - you have given me flashbacks to that ‘70s cult film, ‘The Warriors’! 😎

Florence Dambricourt
19/5/2020 03:01:48 pm

Ah the luxury of being able to move away from our traditional dichotomy "Good/bad" - Just love the starting sentence.

Reply
Nick Wright
19/5/2020 03:05:16 pm

Thanks Florence. I like Stephanie Davies' use of humour at the end of her statement too. Used sensitively to the person and situation, humour can be a great way to diffuse a situation or break a stalemate.

Reply
Peirong
23/5/2020 01:16:46 pm

I find courage particularly challenging in an international context with power dynamics arising from where one comes from and one’s gender. I have been lately noticing how my current default response no longer reads courage but more often than not, caution n status quo. Not terrribly proud of it.

Reply
Nick Wright
24/5/2020 09:07:10 pm

Hi Peirong. Thank you for such an honest and personal response. Yes, power and all kinds of other dynamics, including in relation to gender, can become very apparent when living or working in a different cultural context. It takes courage - and support - to keep stepping out. As my own mentor says about such things: 'Simple - but not easy'.

Reply
Stella Goddard BA (hons) Registered MBACP (Accred)
28/5/2020 11:19:55 am

Nick, Both of the events you describe sound very frightening - life threatening even. In extreme situations I would suggest that we don't know how we would respond unless that becomes reality for us. When all is calm we can think about strategies we might use but in truth if we are terrified our brains automatically go into fight, flight, freeze, flop.

I find myself thinking about people who have been abused and people asking why they didn't just run away or say no. When we are being terrorised or other people are, our brains will do what they need to do to keep us alive.

In response to your question about how good am I in a crisis - it depends on what the crisis is.

Reply
Nick Wright
28/5/2020 11:36:01 am

Hi Stella. Thank you for your thoughtful reflections - as always! Interestingly, when I asked the people involved in the two scenarios described here if they felt frightened at the time, they both said 'No'. Fear - or no fear - is partly governed by what we are thinking and believing in that moment.

The first was preoccupied with helping the two women. She didn't see them as a threat to her but she did see them as a threat to each other. The second made an instinctive judgement call and believed that his life wasn't in danger. Of course, in practice, both cases could have turned out quite differently to how they had imagined.

Yes, it's often the case that when faced with a situation of perceived and/or real threat, we are likely to default automatically to survival strategies such as fight, flight or freeze. It depends partly on whether we have chosen to place ourselves in that situation, or unwillingly found it happening to us; whether it is a sudden emergency or a chronic, slow-onset one...over a long period of time (like the frog in boiling water metaphor, perhaps).

On 'we don't really know how we would respond', I agree. In case of interest, here are 3 short pieces that support that point:

http://www.nick-wright.com/blog/new
http://www.nick-wright.com/blog/lateral-instinct
http://www.nick-wright.com/blog/a-counterintuitive-moment

Reply



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    ​I'm a psychological coach, trainer and OD consultant. Curious to discover how can I help you? ​Get in touch!

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