Maria and I had an argument last night, it is rare for us to argue and this one was not important and did not last very long. But it was upsetting for me, and her too. Arguments are healthy, they can be cleansing and they often lead to understanding and growth. But they are disturbing.

This morning, I couldn’t quite remember what the fight was about, and neither did she. The truth is, we had no idea what we were arguing about. It just didn’t feel good, and something beneath the surface wanted to come out.

It was an old and familiar feeling to me. I always thought my life should be free of conflict and argument. I always thought good people do not fight, do not lose their temper.  I have heard too much arguing in my life, especially the kind that is irrational and unreasoning, and that is not ever resolvable. For children, that can be unbearable.

I heard the Dalai Lama say once that if you worked with him every day, you would see him argue and lose his temper constantly. I sort of got it then, goodness is something we aspire too, but those of us who are moral can never fully and completely achieve if. Give yourself a break, a good therapist told me. You are a good person mostly because you want to be.

For me, conflict is laden,  it triggers old and deep fears and hurts and anger.

Conflict deflates me, and turns me inward. Conflict ignites my old mistrust of people and wariness. It takes me awhile to recover from conflict, but I always do. Otherwise, I might perish.

I feel sometimes as if I have lived a life of conflict, it is has propelled me, damaged me, upset others, shaped my life in good and bad ways, hurt people I love,  kept me away from people, from community. I am sometimes too much at ease belong alone. It is just safer to be lonely sometimes. Intimacy is fraught, sometimes I think I just need to step back from my love from Maria, it is frightening to need it so much.

The angry, sometimes cruel conflict in the political system  affects me also, anger and conflict are in the air we breathe. If feels familiar to me, and dangerous.  When leaders don’t lead, but follow, we all feel vulnerable and at risk. We have to find our better selves by ourself.

What heals? Creation. Creativity. Both are divine.

Creativity has always been my response to fear and conflict, my creativity, my writing, my photography, even my love,  was created out of conflict and hurtful argument. Creation has brought me to a better place, a place of healing and understanding.

I know now that suffering is a part of life, and I accept it. So is conflict.

Wherever groups of people gather,  villains are needed.  Thomas Paine wrote that human communities do not possess the moral virtue to govern themselves wisely and well, so it is necessary to give other people authority and control. And human beings hate authority and control, they inevitable conflict with it. That was always a big part of my life, on both ends, the one in charge, the one who is not.

So the wheel turns and turns.

Human beings seem to always need someone to hate, it defines and organizes them in some way.  I guess it is the Devil’s community.  They also need someone to love and inspire them with goodness. I guess we call that the Lord’s Work. When I am in conflict, I always try to talk it out, to work it out. I am always astonished and bewildered by how many people don’t care to work it out or talk it out, they are drawn to drama and conflict like moths to light. They need it, it fuels them in some way, justifies the hurt and pain in their lives.

I have learned this about conflict. It can happen to an of us at anytime, no one is beyond it or above. But if people don’t want to work it out with me, don’t want to talk about it with me, then I let go of it, that is their problem, not mine.

I know now that I will never live a life without conflict, that some people will always need to hate me and argue with me for all kinds of reasons. Most of them do not know me and will never meet me.

But I know better than to label myself good or bad when conflict happens,  or pretend to see the future. I am wiser and more accepting. Conflict, like suffering, is a part of life. Conflict does not mean I am a bad person, grace comes from my response, from my wish to be better, to face myself with truth and clarity. I l live in the world I live on.  In the era of Facebook,  friendships can be as thick as rice paper. They can come apart in a flash.

The shrink was right. I believe I am a flawed person but a person who wants to be good. That makes me a good person.

And then there is the modern world. There are so many broken and wounded people in the world whose hurt and fury are now only a few clicks on a keyboard away. The brave new world of social media asks much of us, it asks us to swim in conflict and be enveloped by it and call it community.

But conflict is teaching me still, cleansing me, calling to me to learn and be better.

What I needed to change was the fantasy that I could live without it, that truly good people don’t experience conflict. That is a conceit.

I have learned something else: my life is not an argument, neither are my ideas. In our connected world, every idea is disliked and feared by someone, I do not spend my life arguing my ideas. People can take them or leave them, nothing would kill my creativity more than a head full of slights and arguments.

And I am increasingly appreciative of conflict as I have come to understand how it has shaped and inspired me, and how curiously natural a thing it is.

Creativity is my tonic, it has always been,  and I have often wondered about the birth of creativity, about creative arousal.

I found some guidance this week reading the mystical writing of the Kabbalah, which is filled with writing and visions about the creative spark.

The world, say the mystics, could only be created by virtue of the actions of the righteous, the arousal of those below. God was in conflict with the earth and people he created, he was disappointed, he sought goodness: he contemplated the good deeds of the righteous, then yet to be created, and this act of thinking was powerful enough to actualize the thought.

God drew forth the light from within himself and was delighted and uplifted with holy people, those who would eventually come to be in the world.

“This joy,” wrote the mystics, “engendered undulation, greater delight. In the bliss of contemplating the righteous, of imagining  good and holy people, in this fluctuation, the power to create was born.

Creativity was born. The creative spark was given to every human being in the world, it was up to them to feel it and use it. God told the prophets that the people had only two things to fear from him: failure to give the poor hope, and failure to heed the creative spark.

So creativity, say the mystics, was born out of conflict. It is a powerful idea for me.