Friday I posted the question and got a response. So, I guess I’ll answer the question posed. Joe writes,
Do you find it difficult to have so many people obsessed with you?
Joe, I have a sneaky suspicion that your name is not real. But I’ll do my best to answer anyway. First, I don’t have a clue as to what you are referring. I think you may have stumbled upon this question and confused me with the good Sean Michael Murphy. I am not someone who is obsessed over in the way in which you seem to believe. I hope that answered your question. Look for the next installment of “Ask About Bragg” this Friday morning.
May I be honest? That’s a silly question to ask isn’t it; I mean, I’m going to be honest or I’m going to be deceitful and there isn’t much you can do about it except weigh what I say next against what you know of me, what I have said in the past, and what my character might look like in your view.
I have a really difficult time being honest. Oh, not as in I lie, steal, cheat, or take advantage of-kind of honesty issue, it’s one of those talking to someone about one of their ‘things, and it’s driving me crazy’-kind of honesty. It’s not that confrontation is foreign to me, or that I’m anti-confrontation and shy away from it. At least not when someone confronts me. I just have a really difficult time confronting someone else when a particular behavior rubs me the wrong way. For some reason I never seem to have good luck with thost conversations ending well.
For instance, there was a guy that I lived with for 4 or 5 years during college. After he graduated (I still had a year to go), he got busy with his career. He also got one of them wives. Just wait until the end of the story before making any assumptions about where this goes. Anyway, one summer day about a year after we had stopped hanging out/stopped talking, a plane crashes in the suburbs of our city. Knowing that I had begun flying again, he called me to ask if it was me or if I knew the pilot in the crash. I confirmed my continued existence on the planet and hung up. The next time I saw him, about two months later at a wedding, I pulled him aside and asked why he called me that day. I then continued to explain that I was hurt that the only reason I got a phone call after a year of nothing was because there might have been a chance that I had perished. Why does it take an event like a plane crash to spur a phone call to see how a ‘friend’ is fairing in life? Since that confrontation, I’ve never received another call.
At that same wedding, I was approached by another guy I used to live with at a different house. He and I were pretty close during that year and a half. He told me that when he watched ‘Survivorman’ on Discovery, he would think of me and this time we went camping. We made this really stupid lean-to shelter because we both forgot to pack a tent. I asked why he only thought of me instead of calling to see how I actually was. Again, I left that conversation virtually guaranteeing to never talk to that guy again. Both of these guys still live in Cincinnati ironically.
What I learned from those encounters is that whenever I confront someone else with something that bothers me, I lose even more. So, I tend to just keep it bottled (like every good citizen) and deal with the internal frustration as it being a fault of mine. And usually it is. I need to be more patient. I need to extend more grace. I need to…
…keep my sanity. After living in community for the last 8 years, you’d think I might have learned how to deal with conflict better. Turns out I’m just a jerk. And that makes me sad.
How do you deal with conflict in a healthy way that doesn’t ruin friendship, destroy opportunities for the future, and promotes community?
Posted by stevebragg 
