On reconciliation

Non-catholics may not realise that the sacrament of reconciliation is the modern name for what used to be called confession. It is not just the name that has changed. The emphasis on owning up and penance in a dark box in Church has largely been replaced by a quiet chat in a lounge with a priest who tries to help you come to terms with yourself.

In its new form, this is a powerful process. And it is no coincidence that reconciliation is emphasised in many other forms of self-help.

Take the AA 12 steps for example. Step one is about surrender - reconciling oneself to powerlessness. Steps five to seven are a sort of confession. And step nine, the last step before a recovery can enter a phase of stability, is about reconciling and making amends with all those we have wronged. Often the hardest thing to live with for an addict, or anyone else for that matter, is the guilt and shame. These steps face up to guilt and shame, and create the space to make it possible to move on.

A completely different example comes from business, and the Kotter model of change management. The first step in this model is about creating urgency, and it is the one where most change programmes fail. I would argue that this step is about helping those that need to change to feel reconciled with that fact. Before we accept this need we are stuck in the past, living a long-lost dream. Intellectually, we may see this, but it takes a human step of reconciliation to accept it and be ready to move on. The best implementations of Kotter do not emphasise leader speeches and compelling power points, but instead ask people to talk among each other. That way, nostalgia can be seen for what it is, individuals and teams can mourn their loss, and then face a different future. Leaders struggle with this because they do not usually have the need for reconciliation themselves, so are blind to it in others.

Mourning is another form or reconciliation. Nowadays, funerals attempt to be a celebration of life. Another catholic healing sacrament, anointing the sick (formerly last rites – how things have moved on!), seeks to reconcile people with their possible death and help others reconcile themselves to the loss they may face too. A wake tries to achieve the same. A strange ritual at first glance (especially to cold English people like me) it is powerful, and has parallels in most other religions and cultures. Just like in the two other examples above, the key element is encouraging people to talk openly to each other, to rid themselves of the baggage that would stop them moving forward.

So, reconciliation works. We should try it. Some of the happiest news stories of recent years involve reconciliation. Explicit in South Africa via the heroic truth and reconciliation commission, similar processes have been followed, arguably with less grace, in Northern Ireland and the former Yugoslavia. Only this week, ETA in Spain came closer to disbandment, following a long reconciliation effort. It is not easy, especially when memories and discrimination are long-standing and where everyone has a reason to hate and for suspicion. But facing the past, accepting it, and even forgiving it, is the only route out of the cycle of misery. You cannot move forward successfully unless you are at peace with the past.

I sense different sorts of reconciliation are the key steps in other situations. Tony Blair removed clause four, and somehow reconciled most of his party from a past that was no longer relevant. This week’s Economist has a hopeful article about Detroit. It seems that a key step in creating a positive future there has been to accept that the city must be different and smaller than before. The Norwegians were remarkable this summer in reconciling themselves to the massacre of its youth. In its attitude to the EU, the British are not really reconciled to a less powerful role than in the days of empire. Reconciliation is hard – often close to impossible. But its lack is more damning than anything.

Many muses on this and other blogs have some well-reasoned diagnosis, but then are unable to offer practical solutions. The wonderful thing about reconciliation is how much we can do about it ourselves. And we don’t even need priests!

We all have reasons to complain about others. We say stupid things to each other, hurt each other. To some extent, we can’t help it. What we can help is what happens next. We tend to make assumptions about how people think about us, about what they meant when they said something hurtful. We sulk. We are stubborn. Wow, how we are stubborn.

We could instead try another tactic. We could attempt to reconcile. We could make the first move, and apologise, even when we aren’t so sure it was our fault. Apologise, with no buts and no bitterness. We could make it easy for the other party to apologise. We could try to understand things from their point of view. We can try to create conditions where we can move on together.

What would this cost us? A bit of pride. Some feeling that the other party got away with something. Not much really. Whereas the rewards are huge. There are few better feelings in life than after unloading with an apology, receiving forgiveness, and feeling a friend become a friend again after a period of strain. We feel lighter. We feel happier.

So, where to start. Most of us have an opportunity with work colleagues, notably with our boss. Bosses can be so stubborn, as they have their position to maintain. Try disarming them by recognising their side and giving some ground. They won’t know what to do, but they won’t be able to stop themselves giving ground in return.

Then there are parents. Parents still treat us as though we are small children, so usually like to keep a bit of power and struggle to make the first move in apology. How sad. We only have two parents. Imagine if one of them died and we hadn’t made peace with them. It would haunt us for ever. Painful though it is, make the first move. Accept them as they are. No matter how many times they misbehave, never break off good relations. Most of us are lucky, and our parents have time to reconcile their affairs before dying, to set their relationships in order and say what needs to be said. But sometimes that cannot happen, and we have to be ready for that contingency. Follow the timeless advice to live each day as though it were your last.

Then there are other acquaintances, friends, and especially our partners. We can make a start today.

Sometimes we have a strained relationship and we don’t even know what lies behind it. In my experience, the most common cause is that the other party has some baggage to reconcile with you. I had a recent experience of this, and the thing the other party was carrying guilt over came out quite by accident one day. That was a true turning point, as both of us could immediately sense a new lightness, and start to go forward again. We have to be patient of course, as the other party has to move in their own time, but we can always do things to signal our readiness, to make it a bit easier rather than a bit harder. Life is so much happier if we stop seeing it as a point scoring exercise.

When I learned to drive, my instructor taught me some famous last words. Something like “it was my right of way”. If we are killed in a car accident, it is little consolation to know we were in the right. We are dead anyway. This same philosophy applies to our relationships.

In the end, our own peace comes less from seeing the pleasure of others, and more from the feeling of being reconciled with ourselves. That is the point in AA and in the sacrament, and a happy consequence in the business context. We don’t have to leave it until we are on our death beds.

I am one of the worst role models for my own advice that I know. I have relationships to reconcile in all the categories listed, and can be as stubborn as anyone. Wow, how I love to score points. Yet I feel I am getting better, and benefiting a lot from it.

Who will you start out to reconcile with today?