December 30
Without struggle there is no progress. Whoever wants the harvest but shrinks from the plough, whoever wishes for rain without thunder and lightning, is asking for the impossible.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Without struggle there is no progress. Whoever wants the harvest but shrinks from the plough, whoever wishes for rain without thunder and lightning, is asking for the impossible.
In a group that gets along well, the person who first says something uncomfortable is often taken to be the disturbance. Before, the mood was friendly. Afterwards it goes quiet, someone feels attacked, and for a while being together is harder work than it was.
If that was you, it's tempting to think you brought the conflict into the world. Often, though, it was already there, only spread out: among those who always gave way, and in arrangements nobody talked about. The old calm certainly had its price. It's just that others paid it, usually without fuss.
That doesn't yet make your objection right. You can get the tone wrong, or the timing, or the matter itself. At first a justified conflict looks exactly like an unnecessary one, and in the first moment you too can barely tell them apart. This uncertainty can't be removed in advance.
Later, once something has shifted, hardly anyone remembers the silence after your first sentence. You probably do.
