Squawking

I'm kinda, sorta...stuck...in two very stressful situations. It's so bad that my stomach gets upset, my entire body clenches and I am perpetually close to tears whenever I find myself in these areas.

 As I processed both situations on the drive home the other night, something profound occurred to me. The things causing the stress are the minority. In both situations, if I list the good things and the negative things about the situations, the good things outnumber the negative.The problem is, the negative things are the "loudest." And it's a shrill, squawking kind of loud...not the sort of thing you can ignore.

But putting it into perspective, it was sort of like that moment in A Bug's Life. You know...when the ants finally realize that even though the grasshoppers are WAY bigger than them, they outnumber the grasshoppers by like...a gazillion to one...and therefore they are stronger and more powerful!!!

And they run the grasshoppers off and they all live happily ever after! However long that is for an ant...

So I walked into one of these situations with a new attitude of "I've got this!" I was ready to turn things around! It took about 30 minutes before my resolve was shattered, my gut was tight and I was blinking fast to stop the downpour.

I'm just not sure what to do! I'd say I was one of those people who don't handle conflict well...but how many people do you know that actually "handle conflict well"?

And the more I think about it, the more I realize how squawkers have taken over! The trolls on blogs, articles, etc are the minority but I've had to stop reading comments because of them. A popular blogger has seriously considered shutting her blog down because of them. Westboro Baptist Church has something like 40 members and most of them family but somehow they have perpetuated the mainstream media's version of the "church". The Tea Party is a minority and yet they can stop the government in its tracks! The lists goes on and on...

If you really, really think about it the good outweighs the bad. There are more moderates out there than we know but they can't be heard over the squawking! So what do we do? What do the positive forces out there do? Do we get louder? Or does that turn us into squawkers? Less problem solvers and more just adding to the din and chaos? How do we handle the situations where there are 14 people in a room and two of them are making life miserable for everyone?

I just don't know. This isn't one of those blogs where I have solutions, ideas or resources. If you do, please share! I just want those of you who think you are alone in the bathroom stall trying to get away from the nasty that I'm in the one next to you.