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Confrontation is not a negative or bad or harsh thing in and of it self. Every
time we look in the mirror in the morning, we are being confronted with a view
of our face, body and all that we can see in that mirror at the time. When
someone asks for a hamburger at a restaurant, that is a form of confrontation
too. Confrontation is simply one's own consciousness either intersecting with it
self or with another's. There is nothing inherently negative about
confrontation. It's just what it is...a meeting of two conscious thoughts.
What does matter though in confrontation is the attitude with
which it is done and the motive it is done for. The customer confronting the
server at the restaurant with the request for a hamburger can either do it with
kindness, gentleness and respect or without. Either way, it is still a
confrontation. It's just that I think the negative, harsh, uncaring and
inconsiderate confrontations get etched so much more vividly in our
emotional-memory that those are the memories we tend to recall more easily and
then decide that all confrontation is somehow negative in and of it self.
That's like deciding that the act of touching someone with
our hands is a bad thing in and of itself just because hands are sometimes used
to hurt people when they get touched. Certainly very understandable, but just as
wrong as it is understandable. Just like the touch of our hands, confrontation
is a tool which can be used with healthy intents and in healthy ways resulting
in healthy things or with unhealthy intents and in unhealthy ways resulting in
unhealthy things.
If it ever seems like I'm being overly aggressive in
confronting any particular point of view, it may very well be because you are
having difficulty stepping back and taking a good, hard, honest look at your own
beliefs. Due to our uncanny knack for recalling negative confrontations, we tend
to assume that all confrontations (whether of us or of our worldview) are
negative, and that anyone "caught" doing it should be immediately
accused of being aggressive.
Who cares if our world view gets ripped to shreds? Why be afraid
of seeing it for what it really is or seeing or hearing about how other people
see it? The only real danger in the world of thoughts is for them to never be
confronted. If you can't handle someone else confronting your beliefs, you can
go ahead and keep them all to your self, but please, please, please at least
confront them on your own in your own mind.
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