Losing

It used to be that my dad was not shy from confronting people with regard to certain conflicts. The most common kind of conflict concerned his family. I remember when a restaurant in Medan recommended a crab dish that turned out to be spicy (we didn't know that when we agreed to order), he express his displeasure because we ordered for the entire family which included my youngest sister who was just seven years old. He said that the restaurant should have made it clear that the dish was spicy in view of presence of children.

Regardless of whether he was right or wrong, my point is that he reacted that way with respect to such incident. Just imagine how he reacted when it came to bigger and more important issues.

However, as he aged, he mellowed and came to avoid conflict when he can. It seems to be particularly true once he reached his 50s. He still behaves the same way when in Malaysia and possibly in Singapore but when in truly foreign country like Australia, he shrank away even from the simple incident such as poor service. I remember a particular incident when my sister decided to stand up for him and reprimanded someone for being rude to him. It would never happen when he was younger or when he's in Malaysia, as he would have done that himself. I guess he just want to avoid conflict? Shrug.

I too find myself shrink from conflict especially if it only affects me. If it affects my loved ones, wo-ho lo behold the person who inflicts pain on my loved ones. They'll have more than what they can chew. I also will not hesitate to act on poor service.

Though I still no qualms dealing with third-party, I seem to shrink away from conflict involving people I personally know as I get older. At first I thought maybe I know more people and hence there are also more aggresive people, who are opinionated and who do not hesitate to put me down if my "argument" is not solid. I especially disdain people who simply wave their hands to sweep away my arguments, either with condescending words or in condescending  tone and with respect to such people, I used to stand my ground.

But I'm doing less and less of the above in recent years and my self-esteen seems to suffer from this. I'm not sure why. I know I dislike conflict. The whole process of pain being inflicted, finding closure, forgiveness, agreement etc is just too troublesome and emotionally draining and so I supposed I prefer to simply avoid it.

Even more troubling and disadvantageous in such situation above is my gradual lose of coherent articulation of my thoughts. I seem to be losing my vocabulory quickly in recent years. I stammer and pause more often now as I struggle to find words to describe what I think.

I'm losing and I don't know how to turn the tide.