Conflicted about Conflicts

Head in the sand, anyone?

May 20, 2025

Recently, I’ve had discussions with several people who mentioned how much they dislike having conflicts with other people. Since I also dislike conflict of the interpersonal kind, I have to wonder, are there people who actually LIKE conflict?

Just say “no” to conflict, and maybe also AI images like this one.

Look in the comments section on any social media post, and you will find out that there certainly are. But we’re not talking about them today. We’re talking about the rest of us.

Many of us avoid conflict in a variety of ways. Sometimes it’s very reasonable. We don’t need to tell everyone every time we have a difference in opinion, and we definitely don’t have to be forceful and aggressive about sharing everything we think or feel. I’m pretty sure humans evolved with the desire to avoid conflict when possible, since we have to live close to each other in a society, and so we can’t just go out and fight with each other all the time. At least that’s my non-scientific take on it.

But, sometimes, avoidance of conflict can be extreme or cause us to miscommunicate with others, and can even cause damage to businesses and relationships. By avoiding conflict, we are often leaving something undone or burying our own feelings in a way that can have negative outcomes.

I was raised with a “don’t make waves” kind of outlook, with a large side of “don’t hurt anyone’s feelings.” I feel like there are really good things about having these attitudes at times, but, as with anything, there are negatives too. There may be people in my life that I could have a better relationship with if I had spoken up when I was hurt, offended, or whatever. But I didn’t, and I “didn’t” enough times that I just grew to dislike those people, and they probably had a hard time understanding why I avoided spending time with them. And while, in my view, these people were jerks, what if I had spoken up, experienced that conflict, and then resolved it? Maybe we’d be best friends now. It’s impossible to know, but I realize now that I never gave them the chance to apologize to me (or not) because they may not have ever known that I felt negatively about what they said or did.

Just something to think about.

In Other News

I spent this weekend at a Regional Artistic Swimming Meet in central Florida, which might have been the hottest place on Earth. It was a record high temperature for May in that area (95) and had a UV index of 10 (which is “very high” according to the internet). With reflective surfaces everywhere (because it was a huge pool surrounded by light-colored concrete) and a typical Florida high humidity level, it was an absolute sweatfest. The swimmers were fine, but the parents were puddles by the end of Sunday. So gross.

Husband sent me a text asking if I was keeping cool. I sent this back.

But it was a fun time anyway. Not only did the team (and especially my kid) do a lot of winning, my daughter and I usually have a good time when we go on these adventures, even though they tend to be stressful and a little crazy.

Water so cool, just inches away from melting parents on land.

We took her car on the trip because it has more seats in it, and we thought we might be driving another swimmer around some. She has my old SUV (a hand-me-down from my mom), and I have a van, and while you’d think a van would have as many or more seats, you’d be wrong since most of the seats in my van have been replaced by dog crates. (I love my van so much!)

The SUV air conditioning takes about 10 minutes to kick in after the car has been sitting in the sun, so we did some riding with the windows down while we waited for the freon smell to indicate that coolness was about to happen. After it starts cooling, it works great, which is wonderful. About an hour into our ride with the AC on full blast, I told my daughter, “I’m cold, but I feel like it’s disrespectful to the AC to turn it down after it worked so hard to get going.” She agreed, but a half an hour later she decided we’d been respectful enough and cranked it down to halfway.

Another quirk of the car that I had forgotten was that it seems to take a long time for the gas gauge to get to the halfway point, but not so long to reach the E. And that’s how we found the gas tank “on light” near a small Florida town called “Micanopy,” population around 648 (on a good day, it seems). My daughter pronounced it “My-can-oh-pee” which hurt my heart because I realized that I’ve failed as a 6th-generation Florida native to teach her proper Floridian culture (it’s “MICK-an-oh-pee).

Fortunately, Micanopy has at least one gas station (which pumped gas at the speed of snail) and then we got back on our way.

I’m pretty sure “Historic Micanopy” is the only kind of Micanopy.

We also had some excitement at a rest stop where we watched a woman walking her cat on a leash and harness. As she returned to her car, the cat balked, and from my vantage point near the snack machine, I said, “Oh, that cat’s getting out of that harness,” and then she, in fact, did.

I watched the woman beg her cat to come out from under the car for a while, and then I cautiously approached and offered to help. Then some other folks came over too, and the hullabaloo of several people peeking under the car caused the kitty to surrender. I hope the lady gets a tighter harness because I imagine the cat will try that move again.

After we found the hotel, parked, unloaded, found the parking garage, parked, submitted the ticket to the hotel to pay, and got to our room, we continued our meet tradition of ordering something to be delivered by Uber Eats and settled into our stay. We discovered that street parking was free during the weekend, so on Saturday, I did some creative driving to secure street spaces to save $22.50 in parking garage fees. Also, hotels should have free parking. If I’m paying $150 a night, I should have a place to put my car. MAKE IT SO.

We also discovered an interesting ice cream parlor that had made-on-site waffle cones and interesting flavors like Lavender and Key Lime Pie. We had ice cream before dinner on Saturday night because sometimes grown-ups can do that, and I’m all about finding the fun in an exhausting and stressful meet weekend.

My daughter recommends The Aviator flavor.

Only one fun meet and one trip to the Junior Olympics, and we’ll be done with these kinds of adventures. Thank goodness her college has an artistic swimming club that goes to a few meets!

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