Are the Best Intentions Sometimes Not Enough to Avoid Conflict?
Your best Intentions are great – until they meet reality.
Everybody makes mistakes.
Some are big, some small. Most can be forgiven to one degree or another.
When it comes to our intentions, it’s very easy to screw up. When you have no intent on causing hurt or harm – and then do – that’s a pain point.
To quote playwright Oscar Wilde,
“It is always with the best intentions that the worst work is done.”
More than once, I did something with the best intentions to spare someone’s feelings, to avoid causing them distress or hurt, and/or to lessen anxiety or such. And though my intentions were good – I still caused hurt.
You’ve likely made a similar mistake. As far as I can tell, most people have. You intended to do something – and it completely backfired or came out the wrong way. Rather than not hurting someone – you did.
Does that make you a bad person? No. It just makes you human.
How do your best intentions fail you?
No plan survives contact with the enemy
When I started melee combat in medieval fencing – that’s team combat akin to warfare – one of the first rules I learned was that no plan survives contact with the enemy,
What does that mean? Let’s say you plan to attack the enemy head-on. The plan doesn’t anticipate what the enemy will do, however. It expects them to just be there and take it. But what if they split their force and attempt to flank you? Your plan has not survived contact with the enemy – since keeping the head-on attack will get you nowhere.
In other words – you control yourself, and only you. What the other person or people in the equation do is not something in your control. Thus, expecting them to react in one way – when they react completely differently – leads to unintended consequences.
I have no ability whatsoever to choose anything for your and your life experience. I have no control over what you think, what and how you feel, your intentions, or your actions. Likewise, you have no control over mine or anyone else’s but your own, either.
Hence, best intentions might be all well and good – until they meet the facts. The reality of the situation presents unknowns, the unpredictable, and other variables that nothing you can plan for will stand up against.
That which you were doing to avoid causing stress, harm, anxiety, or whatever else now causes not just what you were trying to avoid – but worse.
Because now you must account for the flaws in your best intentions.
The best intentions might not be best
Let me share an example of this sort of thing.
I was in a polyamorous relationship. I started to see someone new in addition to an existing secondary relationship. Said existing secondary relationship and her primary expressed interest in seeing the first someone new I mentioned above.
Yeah, a little complex, but stay with me. Because I had known that my secondary wouldn’t be comfortable that I was seeing that someone new, I delayed telling her. Why? To spare her feelings. It wasn’t going to come up for a while – except my secondary and her partner were now interested in my new person – and it was necessary to tell my secondary about the new person.
Did I choose poorly? Yes. But I had the best intentions. Suffice it to say – that didn’t matter, and I screwed up.
Yes, you can probably analyze all that I did here – and tell me that my best intentions were foolish on my part. That it would have been better to just be forthright with my secondary at the start. And you’re not wrong about that. But I can’t unring that bell.
However, I can learn a lesson from this experience. And from that lesson – consider if my best intentions are going to avoid a conflict – or might lead to a worse situation, and cause undesirable hurt.
Sometimes it does work out
Once in a while, the plan works exactly as intended. And your best intentions lead exactly where you desired them to lead.
But you can’t count on this. It’s not too different from flipping a coin – at best, it’s a 50/50 chance. Even a partial success resulting from your best intentions can have consequences – like lessened trust between you and another, unintended third-party involvement, and increased anxiety for you to experience.
One important point of clarity – best intentions are not about lying. This is kind of a grey area, where you are not telling a lie, but rather taking a circuitous route. Possibly avoiding someone, something, a conversation, or something else. Maybe hedging on something in a way you believe will prevent pain and/or suffering.
You still will go from point ‘A’ to point ‘B’ – but rather than take the direct route, you take one that also passes points ‘C’, ‘D’, and maybe ‘Q’.
Outright lies are selfish. They have nothing to do with best intentions – no matter what you might tell yourself. Lies are not a part of this notion of best intentions – where you are trying to spare someone’s feelings in some way or other. Lies spare only your feelings.
What do best intentions have to do with Pathwalking?
When you choose your life path, you will inadvertently hurt other people. Not intentionally – but when you are choosing what’s best for you and your life experience – others will not see it that way.
When you say no to things you might have said yes to before, when you set boundaries where you didn’t, or you stop being accommodating for your own good – that will be seen as selfish. Self-absorbed. Potentially even as unkind and uncaring.
This can cause you to choose best intentions at times to spare the feelings of others whom you care about. Which is all well and good – save that often, that doesn’t avoid conflict.
And what’s more, the other issue is this – if you are mindfully choosing a path to walk, it’s imperative that you be as genuine and true to yourself as possible. Likewise – that should apply to those you care about, too.
You are not meant to live life for the benefit of anyone else. Yes, if you are a parent, you must consider your children in all you do. If you share your life with a spouse, parent, or any other of import – it’s necessary to consider them, too. But this is still your life – and you get to choose what that looks like when all is said and done.
Mindfulness includes intentions, along with thoughts, feelings, and actions. But this is about intentions for yourself. That’s because you can only control your intentions and how they align with your thoughts, feelings, and actions. That’s Pathwalking 101.
You are worthy and deserving of choosing paths for your life. But be mindful that you will impact others, and sometimes best intentions will cause conflict you’re trying to avoid.
Have your best intentions ever backfired on you? What did you learn from that?
This is the five-hundred and seventy-third exploration of my Pathwalking philosophy. These weekly essays are my ideas for – and experiences with – using mindfulness and positivity to walk along a chosen path of life to consciously create reality.
I share this journey as part of my desire to make a difference in this world and empower as many people as I can with conscious reality creation.
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