I don't know precisely why I'm reminded of one of the more bizarre and sticking “fights” I've gotten into, but let me tell you a bit about a doorknob.
Before we get to said doorknob (oh, I know, you can't wait) I want to talk a bit about negotiation. Our entire lives are a constant one. We're negotiating within ourselves about how to spend our time or money. We're negotiating our work and family landscapes to hopefully keep a healthy-enough head and keep the perks alive. We're less conscious of it, but we're even negotiating the very concept of truths and facts, culminating in our current collective psychosis. Whether you want to call it a “fight” or “discrepancy” or “different perspectives,” all if it reduces to the practice of negotiating.
First hard and fast rule for negotiation is having leverage. Essentially, the first rule is to basically forgo the pleasantries and either hold something hostage or blackmail. If you're a good negotiator, all it means is you've found a way to twist someone to spin the direction you want. The bad negotiator is characterized by a number of things. There's the too persistent bully type. There's the desperate to get you to believe in or buy something. Some don't just give away the bank, but tell you the combinations for the next two banks up the road.
I'm prompted to think of sales. The salesman builds a relationship and makes you sympathetic. You don't need a new vacuum or set of knives, but this nice man who needed a lemonade and has a sob story just looked so helpless! You and him settle on a deal you never intended, and he made you feel good about it. He laid off the sensitive topics, didn't try to overstay his welcome, and knew the material so well, half the time you were talking, you didn't even realize it was about vacuums.
Bad friendships and relationships are negotiations. You don't bring up this and I wont talk about that. I don't mean you shouldn't work out a means for cohabitating or communicating, but the prevailing narrative regarding the longest marriages seems to be if you're a man, “just say yes to everything.” If you equate “long” with “good” as most seem to do, it's because they managed to in some way reduce or remove all of the weight and stress that makes navigating differences difficult. It's when the pissing match of “you did this five years ago” and “you did that 3 months ago” happens you see the negotiated reality blow up. That you want or need to work something out begets not accepting things as they currently are. (This paragraph will need work getting more specific and finding better words.)
Once, I took back a doorknob. I bought the doorknob. I originally installed the doorknob because I was trying to help and take responsibility for a minor party foul of someone going into a roommate’s room and spilling something on her bed. For weeks, she did not buy her own doorknob. The current reality of our living situation at that point was pretty much a party every weekend or so. I was falling out of favor with this roommate, and the doorknob fiasco was one more thing on the list of reasons who I was or what I was doing wasn't good anymore. When that escalated to outright verbal confrontations over increasingly petty things, I took the doorknob back.
I have something of an “infinite leverage.” Essentially, given my disposition and propensity to take responsibility, it's excessively hard for someone to get the better of me. I don't mean that they can't screw me, get me angry, or materially affect me, but for prime annoying reasons, I win. Because I'm in my mind this much, you can't lie to me. You can recite words that are a lie, but I have a way of unpacking them that makes you angry. As long as I refrain from lying to myself and am willing to change my behavior or take responsibility for what I said or did, there's never a “gotcha” moment that characterizes a solidified win as depicted in something like a rap battle.
For people with no leverage, the go-to method is to lie. Lie about your character. Lie about how you feel. Lie about your intentions. Lie about why you got started or what you talked about. We're biased to negotiating reality down into what makes sense for us, and what makes sense for each individual is that everyone else is dramatically and morally wrong. We're not lying if it feels good. We're not lying if the room screams, “Ooooohhhhhh!” after a “truth bomb.” We're not lying if the person we're lying to starts to believe it themselves.
Truth telling is taking responsibility. It's the hammer of “infinite leverage.” If you accurately account for the details, relate how you're feeling as explicitly as possible, and air the dirty laundry of your biased irrational brain, the muck can be disinfected, and the pieces you fought to put together fit a little more snug. Truth is the number one pain people never want to deal with, and the reason you know it works, is that people have the same responses to that pain every single time. It's as reliable as watching someone wince while getting their finger pricked.
I bring on the pain. I bring in the form of intrusive thoughts. I write catchy analogies or use linguistic devices I know help make concepts stick. I often don't have any real emotion or reaction to the topic at hand, so my tone remains invigoratingly lifeless. When the topic is serious, I refrain from reaching too far or giving you something stupid to latch onto that derails the conversation. I explain the full consequences of things you've already said about yourself you don't like or make you uncomfortable. I remember when you lie or contradict yourself. And I ask questions your body and mind answer when your mouth never would.
In the normal world, people find it desirable to hide amongst the group. I don't have a group. I don't respect the group's opinion. I have me on my feeble little quest to keep finding individuals. I have to come home with my brain and the information I've put into it. I have to be able to sleep through the intrusive thoughts if I can't get them on a page beforehand. My allegiance then is to the truth, not you, not your scowl, or your cliché about people disagreeing, or the shiny veneer you think is keeping you safe at work or home. A regular recipe for friendship, I know. The truth sets me free; it's a cliché I can get behind.
I'm negotiating at work. I have no leverage besides my infinite leverage. I'm not under the “rah rah” illusion that this job cares about me. Liars lie and don't know it, but more importantly, don't care to figure out why they don't know it. I work harder than everyone there so I can rely on that truth in my negotiation. I show people the numbers. I post the articles informing my perspective. Neither driver nor manager alike is having any of it, save one. Now, they're liking it in private. They'll come up to me and say, “I really appreciate you saying that,” or “It wasn't right what that guy said against you.” But in public? In the light of day where we could all wash and disinfect, never.
Of course they want more money. Of course their lives are stressful and it's terrible to think you'd have to work every day into your 70's. Of course they dream, or used to, of being something more or starting a family or treating themselves to something nice. But they're ashamed of their truth. They're afraid of their truth. If they lived in their truth, they'd have paragraphs at least as long as mine to say every single day. They might start looking for the fight instead of feeling like someone else's is angling to be dropped into their lap. They don't want to rock the boat because they've refused to learn how to swim.
All you have are these days of your life. You have the thoughts forced on you, and what you can produce in the unique ways your mind puts them together. If you know nothing else, you know if you feel bad. Start there. It feels bad to be poor. You die sooner. You dream less. You get dumber. You get sicker. Suffering can be normalized, but you never feel used to it. In that, you always know what can make it better. If you can't immediately double your salary, you can speak the truth of why it should be doubled. If you can't reconcile differences, you can recite the reality, “It was my doorknob” to every lazy, “I can't believe you did that!” as if the door's been kicked down. Pull your allegiance from the things that destroy you and what you aspire to be. Fight the fear and resistance to speak out. Go it alone. It isn't worth it to be sacrificed on a pithy alter of the status quo. It matters right now, and the ones not willing to stand with you, won't when things get even worse.
