As many can probably relate to, the events of March 2020 led me to, in my own way, go into a sort of lockdown of my own personality and being. I became more close-minded and argumentative than I might like to be, and the result was that my personal relationships suffered. While I do not judge myself for my behavior at the time, in the sense that it was an extremely difficult time both for me personally and for all of us collectively, I have begun the process recently - partially out of necessity and partially out of a genuine desire - to build peace with those in my life whom I have been at war with in a very significant way, not only in 2020 but for large stretches of my life as a whole.
I will use one particular relationship - with some family members - as my foundation for this post.
After a long time of personal warring over various issues that I'm sure will be familiar to the reader, I decided to see what I could do to build a foundation of peace with people that I had viewed as my mortal enemy for a long time.
One of the first things that I did in attempting to follow this path was to actually verbalize this to one of my family members - I said that I was tired of fighting and arguing, and that I wanted to take what steps I could to build a foundation of peace with them. They seemed to resonate with this as well, and ultimately agreed to put in effort towards this project themselves.
While we have still had some big battles in the war since this initial conversation, we have in fact been able to build a relatively nice foundation of peace in a lot of ways between each other. One thing that I found helped in this regard was to find commonalities with your enemy. In my case, a shared love of good tasting and nourishing food was a great entryway into a re-ignition of our relationship. I also started to discuss movies, shows, books, music, and other forms of media that I knew I had a commonality of interest or enjoyment of with the enemy patties.
When disagreements or fights have inevitably arisen, I have done what I can to withdraw from the battlefield when necessary, while also taking accountability for my role in the loss of the state of peace. Even if I felt like I wasn't ultimately at fault for what was causing the warring, I’ve still apologized to the family members for my contribution to the resumption of battle and war, and tried to offer olive branches of peace in various forms.
My recent experience of attempting to make peace with family members has led me to think about the peacemaking process as a whole. A wise but complicated man once said, “Diplomacy is the art of the possible”. In thinking about this topic, what I realized is that being at war - whether in our personal relationships, on a local level, on a planetary scale or beyond - nobody ultimately wants to be at war. War is bloody, horrific and brutal - loved ones die horrific deaths, homes and natural landscapes are eviscerated or otherwise commandeered for the war effort; and these losses are subsequently blamed on the enemy, only further fueling tensions. Nobody wants war.
Therefore, I do not believe it hyperbole to say that we all (or at least, nearly all of us) have in common that we don't want to be at War. Therefore, it should be in all of our best interests to attempt to negotiate whatever kind of peace we can, whether in our personal relationships or on a wider scale, in order to avoid the horrific brutality of war. Even if we have to make significant sacrifices that we are relatively unhappy with, making said sacrifices in the name of the prevention of war is a noble act indeed.
Allow me to use a piece of popular media as an example in this discussion. If you have seen the popular television series Game of Thrones, or read the books it is based on, you will know that the first book & season largely set the stage for what becomes a horribly horrific, brutal, and bloody war that ravages the Westeros continent for an extended period. Countless thousands who had nothing to do with the instigation of the war end up losing their lives in horrific fashion, never to see their kids or wives or husbands ever again. So, with what we know as presented in the book and show, what exactly led to the conflict?
For me, the key instigator of what becomes the war between the southern Crown and the Northern realm is the beheading of Ned Stark by the Mad King Joffrey Baratheon. A wiser king would surely have recognized that beheading not only the warden of the north, but a man largely recognized as not only being able to keep the peace among highly stubborn Northern lords, but a man revered by nearly if not all in the north as almost a kind of father figure, would inevitably lead to protracted conflict that would only end with one side or the other proclaiming (near) total victory. Tyrion Lannister says as much when he knocks over the cup of wine in his father's tent- he says, and I paraphrase, "there's your peace - you'll have an easier time drinking from that cup then you will bringing Ned Stark's son to the table now that Joffrey has beheaded his father."
In spite of this, I do believe it would have been possible to prevent the war from dragging on as long as it did, should either side have been willing to sacrifice something they really cared about, including, in the case of the North, the idea of vengeance for Ned's death. Rob, Ned's son, could have chosen to overlook the dastardly beheading of his father as simply the fancy of a Mad King who knew naught but torture and sadism as the highest form of pleasure. He could have chosen to negotiate with Tywin, the real power of the enemy camp, to find a suitable piece that would prevent the land from spilling open with the blood of thousands. Instead, Rob chose to try to play the hero and avenge his father's wrongful execution, and that, along with other mistakes, ultimately led to the brutal execution of the Northerners at the Red Wedding. While it is true of course that Tywin, Roose Bolton, Walder Frey and others played a key role in the red wedding, there were still decisions and actions that Rob could have taken that could have prevented such a brutal and bloody end for so many members of his house.
For example, even though all logic might have suggested a different course, Rob could have chosen to swear fealty to Joffrey, even if he only intended to uphold that oath to a certain point, in order to maintain the peace. Another possibility was that he could have agreed to cede certain lands or resources to the Lannisters, in exchange for allowing the remaining Northern regions to be ruled under King Rob.