Throughout my two years of university at Catalyst, I have been confronted by an immense amount of thoughts on all sorts of topics, many of these topics are common controversial topics in our society such as climate change, gender equality, queer rights, etc. These topics can be difficult to think and talk about with certain groups of people because there’s a strong disagreement and that’s when conflict starts to develop. Conflict comes from a strong disagreement and according to its definition, it usually lasts longer than one would usually expect. A clear example of a conflict that has lasted for more than 170 years, is the Feminist movement. I think that protracting conflicts such as these show that there is a lack of open-mindedness between one or more opinions/thoughts. In my opinion, having a narrowed vision or a prejudiced eye is not the problem, the problem comes from not being able to open up a discussion between you and yourself, in other words, questioning yourself and that thought to its true nature.
When we have a conflict, whether it is with somebody else or with ourselves, one of the first steps is to recognize that there is a conflict. This may sound very obvious to some people, but oftentimes we don’t recognize that there is a conflict, and sometimes we can end up feeling overwhelmed. Studies have shown that our thoughts don't define us, thoughts appear as easily as they go away because of this, we tend to get inside our heads and dwell on our thoughts. You see, when we recognize what the conflict is, we allow ourselves to recognize our thoughts and we can let ourselves look at it from a different point of view. From then, we can take the next step and begin to question the conflict. We can go many ways in solving a conflict but we must ask the right questions, by asking the right questions we can organize ourselves properly and strategize what to ask. Questioning is a skill and one of the only living organisms that can question is the human being.
Throughout these two years of university, I have had a lot of conflicts between myself, classmates, friends, and tutors. Many of these conflicts indeed lasted longer than I anticipated but, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s bad, because, every time I would go through the process of solving a conflict I would learn more about myself and other people. Often, when I stumble upon a conflict, I try to approach it with curiosity because I have understood that if I approach with curiosity negative feelings such as fear and shame start to vanish, and the more questions I ask, the less negative feelings arise. Imagine it like a seesaw, when curiosity rises fear decreases, and vice-versa. I feel like I have always been gravitated towards being curious and as I progress through life I have unconsciously developed this behavior of approaching conflicts with curiosity as often as possible, however, I didn’t always know I was doing this until I started recognizing this behavior of mine a couple of months ago when I got into practicing mindfulness. Practicing mindfulness through meditation and breathing exercises made a huge impact on me and my projects in the last semester of my second year of university, I'll talk more about it in the coming chapters. Coming back to my main point, I think that the first step to solve a conflict is to recognize that there is a conflict from there, we need to question the conflict. One of the first questions I ask myself when I have conflicts is “why is it a conflict for me?” because sometimes I get caught in conflicts, and I don’t even why I’m bothered about this.