Nox Amicus

At 1:39pm on Friday the moon was new again, marking the time to roll into another theme of focus.

The last lunar cycle saw me looking at Chaos – fitting since it seems to be more obvious these days. Over the past week I’ve felt more caught in the maelstrom than I remember being in a long time – as I said last month, I’ve been easily irritable lately, just very unsettled, and it doesn’t take very much at all to set me off. Usually, it’s “we need you to…” and I’m off. Requirements and expectations have taken a lot of effort for me to fold into the mix.

This led to me tilting at windmills a lot – fighting without direction or opponent. Then, last week, I started to apply a different analogue.

I used to think of chaos in terms of the [fundamental physical forces](https://www.space.com/four-fundamental-forces.html) (electromagnetic, strong nuclear, weak nuclear, and gravitational). I used to envision things veering close to one another and then peeling away – always swirling in the eddies of everything. It was gentle, it was elegant, and it was fascinating.

The new perspective is more of a pinball machine. Sure, there is the occasional magnet in the table that causes the ball to change course, and there is a strong reliance on gravity – but for the most part, progress is determined by what you do with the flippers, the angles of reflection off the bumpers and kickers, and how well you can manage all of them to hit the targets and advance the score.

And that’s when it hit me. Literally.

I have been conflict-averse all of my life. I needed to be. You can’t make everyone happy if you are in conflict with them – you have to be amenable, you have to be conciliatory, resistance isn’t just futile – it’s bad form.

But really – Conflict, and the tension that is part of it, is what propels us forward. It doesn’t have to be mean-spirited or aggressive, but it has to be genuine and asserted. There is nothing wrong with the initiation of conflict if it comes organically and is part of an over-arching process. If it moves the game forward and is mindfully woven with threads of compassion, then it is a natural, and essential, part of this thing called life.

So the theme for this month is Conflict. And no – you know me – this does NOT mean I’m going to pick fights every chance I get. But I will try to be more mindful of when I am feeling resistant, or insistent, and do a better job of advocating for myself.