Non Confrontational Subversion

Originally written in June of 2019, published on blog in May 2020.

I find myself thinking about the phrase “non-confrontational subversion.”   Honestly, stealth is my super power, and I think I am really only coming to respect, understand and embrace that.

Growing up, many of the adults around me had, shall we say, a certain lack of coping skills where stress was concerned.  So, whenever a tough moment happened, there was a great deal of verbalizing to let off steam.  Without consciously realizing it until much later, I came to devalue this, and preferred a quiet, non-confrontational approach most of the time. 

Early on in my life, I rarely “got into it” with people, as far as screaming and yelling, name calling, belittling, devaluing or labeling which I so often saw happening when people disagreed. The more I saw others doing it, even other kids, the more I retreated to my solid ground of quiet calm. This was completely subconscious on my part, there was definitely no thought process around this until many years later, as an adult, when I realized I was doing this and sought to dig into it more deeply.

Looking back now, I can see areas where I stood my ground for certain, but not in the more “outward” way that I saw most people adopting. 

When our gym teacher had us do square dancing, I refused, along with several other students.  We were assigned to bring in 100 reasons why we would not square dance.  Everyone else did it.  I had three.  I told the teacher that I talked to my parents about it and there were only 3 reasons, and they agreed with me.  The teacher and the other kids said “You just make up silly nonsense reasons to get to 100.  I just looked at him…I couldn’t make sense of this.  I finally said “I wouldn’t write lies.”  I don’t think he knew what to do with that, and the issue was dropped.

A former boss many years ago forbade me to work with another department to get something done because she disagreed with the internal process being used. She wanted our area OUT of the loop.  Meanwhile, every time this issue occurred, customers were being screwed because of this internal tug of war between departments, with no one giving an inch.   One particular time this happened, and my boss forbade me to work on it.  The following week she went on vacation. The underwriter and I planned ahead, and took care of the extremely grateful customer while my boss was gone. She did discover this a few weeks later, and told me if my department were not currently being eliminated due to a merger, we’d be having a vastly different discussion.  I said that I understood, but that honestly, I would do it again because I believed in what I did.  So, I didn’t “have it out” with her. I simply did what I knew was right and I was alright with the consequences.  I was surprised that there wasn’t more that happened in that regard.

I’ve had a couple of family members or relatives over the years with whom I’ve had consistent difficult interactions with, because I stood my ground.  But I rarely escalated to screaming. In fact, I often drove them bat-sh** crazy in my attempts to try and force a kumbaya moment by calmly discussing things.    I was always wanting to crowbar everyone into that détente, but without anyone getting ornery.   It took  me a very long time to discover that there are times when that isn’t realistic and it’s alright to just walk away from people. 

Over the years, I have spent time  in the “verbal confrontation” arena, either in person or on social media.  I have found that I greatly dislike the person that I became in these situations.  I alienated people and used all of the tactics that I loathe…categorizing, name calling and belittling.  I can be ruthless, personal and brutal, verbally. Each time I ended up upsetting many people, accomplishing nothing, no good came of it, and in the end, I would get physically sick from the negative energy.  Clearly this type of communication is not my wheelhouse.  

 This week a few things have challenged my lovely comfort zone and it has been interesting to stand back and observe myself and others.  

First, I became aware of a somewhat disturbing occurrence locally, a blurring of the separation of church and state, which I believe in quite strongly.  I found myself in the position of needing to decide if I were going to voice those concerns, or remain silent.  My comfort zone said “Shut up.”  My heart knew I couldn’t and so I did let my concerns be known.  I wrote a courteous email voicing my concerns. 

That happens to me frequently.  If I think something could “get ugly” I immediately want to hide and avoid it.  But now, I can catch myself, I can step aside and actually observe myself doing that.  I can recognize that fear reaction and work through it and find a sensible course of action. Often this does NOT involve continuing to hide but it does usually involve much calmer ways of approaching things.  Because, that’s my jam. That’s where my experience lies. I can see now that I’ve built this skill set for years, ways to affect change while working to remain in a courteous, respectful, non-judgmental space.

Then, over the past several weeks, I’ve noticed at least 7 or 8 different sources that all seemed to me to have similar overlapping themes.  What it means to be a witch, what it means to be a pagan, what is the valid way to interact with various goddesses, and what a pagan or witch’s role should or should not be in the community are a few examples.

I am well aware that I have a longstanding issue with this last territory. Going way back to my days as a Catholic, I have had a tendency to become aggravated when someone attempts to define my path or say what I needed to do or not do on that path.  So I’ve been watching myself “eye roll” and be annoyed at what seems to me to be heavy handed approaches toward witchcraft, paganism and various aspects of it.  

I watch my reactions. When am I on track? When I am I being unnecessarily fearful or aggravated?  When is it good to do consensus building? When to walk away.  When does someone ELSE’S reaction to “me being me” matter?  When does it not?  I'm learning, more and more, that if I am operating in my integrity, then it's not an issue for me if people are okay with me or not.  Freedom is what that is.

I was in a group of people called into the priest’s office as a young adult in a Catholic youth group. We were overheard calmly discussing and questioning why and how certain things were being done. We were not disrespectful.  We got called on the carpet as a friend of his overheard and reported to him.  Some might say, why didn’t you speak with him?  We were gathering our thoughts, and never had the chance. Questioning his judgement was apparently not appropriate.  In general, I respected him greatly, but I always saw that particular interaction as one where I did not respect his actions, and I did not take anything significant away from that office meeting that day.

I’ve been in a mad love affair with The Divine my entire life.  I’ve never really needed anyone to interpret that.  My usual reaction?  Take what works for me and leave the rest behind, like at a buffet. I have, in effect, “spit out” plenty of things into a napkin and thrown them away if they do not fit.    

 Now that I think about it, that’s a very particular skill set I’ve been building. Non confrontational subversion.  Creating change in gentler ways.  We aren’t all suited to screaming from the rooftops. But we CAN all affect change, each in our own way.  I am really kind of proud of this now. We all find our own path, and do our thing our way.   I wish I'd come to that conclusion sooner, but I'm happy to have gotten there at all.