Unfinished Business

We live in a world today that encourages us to dream and go for it. That is pretty good advice because we tend to under-estimate our higher purpose. We aim too low rather than aiming too high. However, an ancient teaching cautions us about two times when we should count the cost - when we are planning to build and when we are planning on initiating conflict. 

So what is it about building and conflict that warrant this cautionary note from a teacher speaking thousands of years ago? I think that in both cases it is the cost we will pay if we are unable to finish what we started.  

Unfinished projects cost us in several ways. First, they cost us the resources we invest in the project to get them started, including time, energy and usually money. We have already learned that it is easy to over-invest during the enthusiastic stage at the start of projects (see Understanding Patterns: Growth). Second, they cost us our reputation both in our eyes and in others. It is easy to get a reputation for starting and not finishing things that becomes a self-fulfilling pattern. Third, they cost us the opportunity of learning from our mistakes. When we hold onto the thought that we will finish it one day, we deceive ourselves. It would be better to finish it now, one way or another, and realize the true cost of what we started. Next time we will be more cautious. 

Unfinished conflict is even more damaging. When we engage in conflict without counting the cost, a pattern of escalation often results, and we can find ourselves in a situation that we never would have viewed as acceptable when the conflict started. Unfinished conflict may rob us of relationships that were once close or full of potential - stealing what we could have accomplished together. Unfinished conflict can also become an escape from people who are telling us the truth about ourselves. If everybody we talk to agrees with us, maybe it is because we have silenced those who risked to reveal what we cannot see, and what we need to learn. 

Conflict can be healthy when it is for the right reasons and when it is seen through to resolution. I believe that there is such a thing as productive conflict (although my usual response to conflict is avoidance or blind reaction) and I am planning on exploring it further in a future blog. But unfinished conflict is not productive conflict.  

Unfinished business, whether it is building something, or conflict, is a key killer of many dreams. Finishing unfinished business is uncomfortable. We don't want to be reminded of it. That is why many of us avoid it for far too long or forever. Bringing closure to unfinished business may seem pointless when there are a lot of things that we have left unfinished but it is a key strategy to engage in as we put the pieces of our dream together.