The Anatomy of PEACE. RESOLVING THE HEART OF CONFLICT. The Arbinger Institute

hs that followed, Lou came to see Carol as a contradiction. On the one hand, she had an amiable, easy air about her—quick to laugh, always ready with an engaging, sometimes witty response. In a word, she was fun. Fun to talk to, fun to joke with, fun to be around. On the other hand, she was instinctively cautious. The obedient daughter of a preacher, she was raised to be wary of men and their intentions. Her father was fond of asking all of her suitors to come down into his base-ment to "see his trains." Whereupon, without turning on the lights he threatened them life and limb if they were to do any¬thing unseemly with his daughter. As the latest in a long line, Lou received this lecture as well. He thought it might have had a strong effect on a high school-aged boy who lived in the preacher's home town. For a junior in college, however, with no attachment to her father's congregation or faith, the lecture sim¬ply raised practical roadblocks. By then, he had completely fallen for Carol Jamison. Now he knew that Mr. Jamison had to approve of Lou before Carol could fully fall for him.
He spent a lot of time with her father and his "trains."
Between dates with Carol and lectures from her dad, Lou's grade point average took a beating. But there was no turning back. He thought of Carol during class and study time anyway, so it was no good trying to rescue his grades by pulling away. Ultimately, Lou, who had been raised a nonpracticing Chris¬tian, won the trust of Carol's religiously devoted father, and he proposed. It was then that Lou learned a lesson about Carol's independence. She might have shared her father's caution, but she did not blindly act upon his approvals. When Lou first pro¬posed, she told him she would have to think about it. He held onto the ring for five months before she finally allowed him to
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slip it on her finger. The moment would stay with Lou forever: "Yes, Lou, I will marry you," she suddenly told him out of the blue, as they were driving home from a church service one rainy Sunday afternoon.
"Excuse me?" Lou couldn't help from blurting.
"I'll marry you, Lou. I'll devote my life to you and to our family."
And she had.
As Lou remembered this, he knew he had not returned the single-minded devotion. Oh, his eye never wandered to other women. That was not his vice. No, his problem was not occa¬sional lust for others, it was rather a constant lust for himself— for his own success, his own station in the world.
It had started innocuously enough with his decision to en¬list in the marines and go to Vietnam. He started toying with the idea while Carol was mulling his marriage proposal. Per¬haps out of fear of rejection, or maybe as a way of avoiding what ultimately would be a public embarrassment if she were to fi¬nally reject him, or still yet out of a fervent patriotism, Lou had enlisted two days before Carol surprised him with her accep¬tance. It would be five years before they would walk down the aisle.
That was twenty-five years ago. Their first child, Mary, was born less than a year after that, and their second, Jesse, followed two years later. Lou's first company was "born" shortly there¬after, and with it a workplace obsession that left Carol to play the part of a single parent—emotionally in any case, if not phys¬ically as well. Cory, their third child, was more than a day old before Lou made it to the hospital to see him and to see Carol. "The meetings in New York just couldn't wait," he had told her. They never could. Even though Yale Hospital in New Haven was only a ninety minute excursion from Wall Street.
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Carol had been hurt by his absence, but she had by then grown used to it. Lou didn't take well to being told what to do or when to do it, so she had learned over the years not to ask much of him. The contradictory combination of her fierce de¬votion and steely independence is what held the family, such as it was, together. He blanched in memory of the time, ten years or so after they married, when after Carol had asked him to do something, he had asked her to come into their walk-in closet. Unsure why, she had timidly followed. Lou had then instructed her to put on a pair of his pants. She looked at him quizzically but played along. "Now Carol," he had said, "What do you notice about those pants?"
"That they're too big for me," she had said, as the waist gaped open around her.
"And never forget it!" Lou had answered emphatically, re¬ferring not to the difference in their waist sizes, but to the weight of the responsibilities Lou felt he shouldered.
He shuddered at the memory. If Carol's father had still been alive, Lou knew he would have deserved a violent meeting with his trains.
These cogitations remained with Lou the next morning as he and Carol drove in silence to Camp Moriah. As they neared the offices, he could keep his thoughts to himself no longer. "Carol, I'm so sorry," he said. "Deeply sorry."
"For what?"
"For everything." He shook his head pathetically. "For not loving you as you have deserved to be loved. For not being there for you as you have always been there for me."
Carol didn't say anything for a minute. Her eyes started to water. "You've been there, Lou," she finally said. "Sometimes you've been other places as well, that may be true. But you've always come home to me. Many women are not so fortunate.
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Not many can say that they've never had to worry, but I've never had to worry about you, Lou. Whatever else you might be devoted to, I've always known that you were devoted to me too."
"But it shouldn't have been a 'me too,'" Lou said. "That isn't good enough. Then he set his jaw. "I'm going to make it up to you. I promise."
After a moment's silence, Carol said, "You're not the only one who needs to apologize."
"What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean," she said. "I've been there for you, I suppose, but my heart hasn't necessarily been there. I've been blaming silently for years."
"But you've had every right to," Lou defended her truth¬fully.
"Have I?" She turned to him. "The more I've become con¬sumed with how my own needs aren't being met, the larger those needs have become, until I think I have numbed myself to the needs of others—to your needs, to Cory's."
"There you go beating yourself up again, Carol."
"No, Lou, beating myself up is what I have quietly been do¬ing for years now. I'm not beating myself up now, I'm just finally noticing the internal fight."
"But all you've done for years is meet everyone else's needs, Carol. You've never lived for yourself at all."
Carol smiled weakly. "That's what I've been telling myself too, Lou, but it hasn't been true. I see that now." And then she added, "I've been hating you, Lou."
This rocked him.
"Hating me?" he repeated lamely.
"Blaming you, in all kinds of subtle ways." She paused. "Have I dutifully performed the household work? Yes. But that's just a behavior, don't you see? Every time I've cleaned the
146 • FROM WAR TO PEACE
house, I think I've buried myself a level deeper in self-pity. And I have spent years now feeling guilty for not feeling about you the way I know I should. It's been a downward spiral."
Lou didn't know what to say. "So what are you going to do?" he finally asked.
"I don't know for sure. I hope to get more help with that today."
At that, the conversation went quiet, and Lou and Carol pondered their situations in silence. Two minutes later, they arrived at Camp Moriah.
It was time to go deeper.
16 • A Gift in Wartime
"So, how was everyone's evening?" Avi asked with a big smile once the group had seated themselves in the room.
Lou looked around at them and was surprised to discover that he felt at home in the room, as if among friends. Yes, that is what they have become, he thought. Pettis, the fellow vet and clear-minded student. Elizabeth, the high-minded Brit with sub¬tle humor and surprising self-honesty. Ria and Miguel, the oddly matched couple with an ongoing battle over the dishes. Jenny's quiet and timid parents, Carl and Teri. Even Gwyn, Lou's blus¬tery counterpart, who had accused Lou of being racist. Lou started chuckling at the realization that he was even glad to see Gwyn.
"Lou, what's so funny?" Avi asked.
"Oh nothing," he smiled. "It's just good to see everyone this morning, that's all."
"Even me?" Gwyn asked with a wry smile.
"Especially you, Gwyn," Lou laughed.
In the comfort of the moment it was easy to forget how much had changed since the morning before.
"So how do we get out of the box?" Avi asked rhetorically. "How can our hearts turn from war to peace? That is the ques¬tion for today."
"Good, because I sure want the answer," Lou said.
"Actually, Lou, you have already lived the answer," Avi replied.
"No, I don't think so," Lou smirked.
147
148 • FROM WAR TO PEACE
"Sure you have. Just compare how you are seeing and feel¬ing about everyone here today to how you were seeing and feeling about them yesterday morning."
It was as if someone suddenly turned on a bank of lights Lou had grown accustomed to seeing without. His thoughts and feelings about this room and the people in it had changed. He could see it. But how?
Lou verbalized his internal question: "You're right. Things seem different to me this morning. But why?" he asked. "How?"
"Do you mind if I tell you a story?" Avi asked.
"Please."
"Do you remember my stuttering and my suicide attempts?"
Lou and the rest nodded.
"I'd like to tell you what happened. To do that, I need to go back to 1973."
Avi started pacing across the front of the room. "I celebrated my fifteenth birthday on October 5, 1973," he began. "The next day was Yom Kippur, or the Day of Atonement, the holiest day on the Hebrew calendar. It's a day of prayer and fasting in Israel, a day when everyone — even Israel's defense forces—gather at home or in their synagogues in religious observance.
"Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack that day at pre¬cisely 2:00 p.m. —Egypt from the south and Syria from the north. I'll never forget the piercing shriek of sirens that called the reservists from their worship and into uniform. My father, himself a reservist, raced from our Tel Aviv home within min¬utes. His unit was mobilized to the north, to fight back the Syr¬ians along the Golan Heights.
"That was the last time I ever saw him."
Avi paused for a moment and then continued. "As a young boy raised on the David-and-Goliath-like tales of the Six Day War, I expected him home within the week. But he was killed
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in a mortar attack three days later—one of many casualties in a place aptly called the Valley of Tears.
"My best friend was an Israeli Arab named Hamish. His father and mine worked at the same company. We met at an event the company threw for employee families. He lived in Jaffa, not too far from my home on the south side of Tel Aviv. We got together as often as we could.
"Of all the children I associated with in my youth, Hamish was the only one who never made fun of my stutter. It wasn't just that he never made outward fun of me, it was that I knew he never thought ill of me inwardly either. After all, what were a few garbled words between friends?
"When Hamish heard about my father, he came to grieve with me. But angrily I sent him away. I'll never forget the scene: Hamish, his head bowed reverently at my door while I forced out a string of butchered obscenities and blamed him for my father's death. I blamed him, my best friend, my playmate from my youth. He killed my father—he and those who believed and looked like him. That is what I said.
"I shook in rage as he, still bowing, retreated from my door¬step, turned silently away, and then walked forlornly down the street and out of my life.
"Two of the most important people in my life were sud¬denly gone—one a Jew, taken out by an Arab's weapon, and another an Arab, banished by the verbal bullets of a Jew.
"There was another casualty, of course. As we've learned, such a turn from the humanity of another requires extensive jus¬tification. I began to exterminate in my mind a whole portion of the human race. Arabs were bloodsuckers, cowards, thieves, murderers—mere dogs who rightfully deserved death and were let to live only by the good graces of the Israeli people. What I didn't realize until years later is that whenever I dehumanize
150
• FROM WAR TO PEACE
another, I necessarily dehumanize all that is human—including myself. What began as a hate for Arabs developed into a hate for any Jews who refused to share my hate for Arabs and nearly ended with a level of self-loathing that left me in a pool of blood on a bathroom floor in Tempe, Arizona.
"But that's how I met Yusuf.
"My mother, frightened by the depths I sank to after my father's death, had sent me to the United States in the summer of 1974, to live with her brother. It was here that I learned to hate two other groups: first, the religious Jews, represented by my observant uncle, who insisted on looking to God when it was obvious that God, if there was one, was looking the other way; and second, the affluent Americans with all their toys and commercial gadgets, who looked askance at the stuttering teenager who was forced to wear a kippah, or skullcap.
"I wrestled with my stuttering as an act of survival and self- defense and finally was able to gain a kind of conscious con¬trol over it by the time I enrolled at Arizona State University. But I was alone—cut off from the humanity that walked and talked and drove by me on every side. I was a solitary human soul.
"You mig