About seven months ago, I began a quest. I was determined to figure out how to become exceptional at conflict resolution. For five out of those seven months I felt like I was getting nowhere, and that maybe my quest was a fruitless search for a nonexistent paradise. It felt a lot like when you’ve been playing the same passage for hours and hours and hours, and the passage seems unsolvable and unlovable and completely lacking in beauty and meaning. Then, as often happens in such moments of despair, I peered out and saw a glimmer of light at the end of my long dark tunnel. At the John F. Kennedy airport, I saw a book entitled “MINDFUL LISTENING” by the Harvard Business Press. It was a tiny little white book with gold letters on the front. I didn’t even know what it was about but I bought 6 of them. I figured maybe they could be gifts for my chamber mates at Borromeo Music Festival. I had no idea that I was about to read something that would change my life forever. (Yes, I do realize that this 100% sounds like a commercial for this book….it isn’t….) After miraculously getting my two instruments on the plane, and settling in for my long flight, I opened up my book and took out my pen and prepared myself to learn something. What I did not prepare myself for was how I was about to be humbled. Less than ten minutes into the flight I read the following sentence: “Good listeners are trying to help, not trying to win.” It was at that moment that I realized what had been wrong with my quest. When my search began, I hadn’t just been looking for a way to resolve conflicts. I had been looking for how to get people to see that I was right. I wanted to do it kindly of course, but I still thought that I was undeniably right. This is why my quest had been getting literally nowhere.

Have you ever worked with someone that refused to change their tempo in a performance because it was the “right” tempo, even when clearly it wasn’t working out for someone (or everyone else) in the group? ….Well when I read the line: “Good listeners are trying to help, not trying to win” I recognized that I had been doing the same exact thing, but in conversations about rehearsal scheduling, time management, and group goals. I even recognized that I had been doing that in other deeply important relationships. I had been so determined I was right, that I wasn’t allowing for compromise, and because of that I was stagnating my growth and the growth of my relationships. Relationships are built on compromise. They literally don’t exist without it. The chance of any two people wanting the exact same things 100% of the time is almost 0.

Is it easier to play alone than to play in a group? Yes. Is it easier to work independently than to work in a partnership or a family? Yes.

But will a solo ever sound like a quartet?

Will a single person ever feel like a family?

NO.

Once while I was serving my Mormon mission, I told a couple that was struggling that

LOS ZAPATOS NO SON TAN IMPORTANTE COMO EL AMOR.

(SHOES ARE NOT MORE IMPORTANT THAN LOVE)

I pointed out that the things we fight about as coworkers, as friends, as couples, as families— they are often small things. I gave the example of a couple fighting over where to put shoes in the house. Of course, we need to talk about these things. The shoes need an organized place, the kids need a good school to go to, the roommates need to define boundaries, the couple needs to talk over behaviors that make them feel good and behaviors that don’t make them feel good, the string quartet needs to discuss about 5,000,000 technical and musical decisions to make one movement sound the way they’d like it to. But, is love not more important? Can these decisions not be made in love? Is there not always a loving way to have a discussion?

Love is nothing without listening, and listening is nothing without being able to admit that we might be and very well could be wrong. I am the kind of person that likes to have a plan. I like to know what’s happening in the next fifteen minutes, in the next three hours, in the next five days, and I used to make a ten year plan every year in January. I like to have a complete picture of how things are going to go. What I’ve finally realized is that listening means letting go of the plan. Listening means understanding that life doesn’t come with a trailer. You never know what’s coming next. Listening to your loved ones means knowing that you might have to write your planner in pencil, and that some days you might have to completely rewrite the plan. Listening to the musicians in your chamber group means knowing that you might practice the same section twelve hundred times the same exact way, and play it differently in concert— and that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Resolving conflicts requires being able to accept that life is unpredictable and that people are unpredictable and that you won’t always have the answers to everything. The answer to all of my searching for how to be an exceptional conflict resolver and an exceptional listener is scary. It requires me to be able to let go, which I’m exceptionally bad at. But if I’ve learned anything this summer it’s that when we let go, the strings of our lives resonate openly, and we can fill the world with a more beautiful song.

So my dears, Let’s not fight over shoes PORQUE LOS ZAPATOS NO SON TAN IMPORTANTE COMO EL AMOR.