A few nights ago, Andrea and I went to see a show billed as “The Free of Fear NYC Debut and Album Release Concert.” Our two sons, Lennon and Jack, had written the album’s music, played most of the instruments, and were the front men for the show, so naturally we went.

My expectation for the evening was to see a set of musicians walk on stage and play all of the pieces that appear on the album. There was indeed that, but far, far more. I and the rest of the audience were treated to a fascinating mixture of visual and auditory art created and performed by a variety of colorful individuals all seeking to explore this idea of being free of fear.

Off in one of the corners of the venue was a collection of thematic paintings and drawings.

Along a side wall, a video screen displayed moving visuals that appeared to be in sync with the band’s stirring musical performance.

Dramatically performed poetry readings, a thoughtful short story, and an intriguing dance number were all interwoven into the overall evening experience. Most unexpected of all was an aerial acrobatics act that could have easily been something out of Cirque du Soleil. Here, as the musicians played a kind of eerie celestial number that mounted in intensity, a lovely woman became entangled in two black curtains that symbolized fear. As she appeared to mightily struggle with these curtains—yanking herself high above the audience, twisting, twirling, suddenly falling upside down to within an inch of her skull, clawing back up once again and finally freeing herself–audience members were left with their jaws hanging from their mouths.

What Is Free Of Fear?

As the musicians in the band describe it:

Free of Fear is the music we always wanted to make but, up until now, never knew how to. It is the intention of creating from a neutral ground of infinite possibility, a place of total spontaneity, completely in the moment, unfettered by fears and self-doubt.

However, during the process of creating this music we experienced countless moments of uncertainty, lack of confidence in our abilities, insecurity about if people would like our sound, and a host of vague, strange, unnameable fears that arose while writing, recording, practicing, and performing our creation. During those moments the concept of Free of Fear has been a rallying cry inspiring us to overcome those trepidations and bring us back to the moment of this point in the journey, reopening ourselves to a deepening gratitude for the vibrations of the universe.

And now we wish to extend that rallying cry to you. We invite you to join the Free of Fear Movement. Its purpose is to foster an environment of encouragement that instills confidence and inspiration in each individual to create the art that only they can make. We invite you to explore the reality of the fears and insecurities in your own life, to stand up to them, and to step foot onto a path of creating and living the life that you truly wish to lead.

My Reaction

After the last notes were played and Andrea and I drifted into the cool night air, thoughts drifted through my mind. Enjoying being with a group of people, sharing a musical experience, dancing to lively rhythms and meeting interesting new people were beautifully achieved. A band seeking to inspire people to overcome their fears that have been preventing them from doing the things they really would like to be doing–I guess I kinda like that idea. Inspiring narratives have begun to stir a process within, deepening my understanding of the nature of an intriguing emotion.

A few months earlier, I had written a post on Nelson Mandela, and I have now begun to think more deeply about how he inspired so many throughout the world. Certainly one reason is his gripping narrative that involves resisting injustice despite the fear of a violent repressive regime, then his 27 years of suffering in prison, and then his phenomenal rise, against all odds, to become president of his country. But there is something else. Once he got out of prison, Mr. Mandela put forth a vision of why his struggle was important, a vision that allowed millions of people to enter into a connection with him and with one another. “Great anger and violence can never build a nation,” Mr. Mandela declared. “We are striving to proceed in a manner and towards a result, which will ensure that all our people, both black and white, emerge as victors.” With such words, Mr. Mandela invited all of humanity to work toward a more just world.

The Free of Fear movement has a narrative that, in a sense, is like Mr. Mandela, in that it describes a process of achieving something of value despite moments of fear, and it is a cause that most of us feel a connection to. The Free of Fear movement, to be sure, is a less dramatic story than Mr. Mandela’s, at least at this early point of its existence. The band members’ one year struggle with their own fears while living modestly in NYC doesn’t quite compare with Mr. Mandela’s 27 years in prison. And creating a fresh new set of music and presenting it on the modest NYC’s Shangri-la Studios’ stage with other artists’ creations is a much smaller scale event than what Mr. Mandela achieved on a national and international stage. But in a deeper sense, human beings can profoundly benefit from both types of narratives. The Free of Fear movement, currently, focuses on basic fears of your typical person on the street attempting to find the courage to ask someone out on a date, or creating something despite the fear that others might not like it. These types of struggles are more of what we may call your typical garden variety struggles, but to each of us who are struggling with them, they are of vital importance.

Consider, for a moment, the many people who have come to realize that their drinking has become a serious hindrance to their daily life and fear that they won’t be able to overcome this problem. Here is a problem that occurs everyday in pretty much every community. Over the years when I asked people who succeeded in overcoming this problem what was most helpful, the most common answer has been that they went to some self-help group meeting and became inspired by the many personal narratives of people who had struggled as they were, and despite serious set-backs along the way, they managed to beat their alcohol-related difficulties.

Interestingly, of all of these types of alcohol dependency recovery stories that I heard over the years, the one that stands out most to me concerns a man whom I will here call Bob. In addition to hearing these recovery types of narratives, Bob had an additional source of inspiration. Throughout the lowest period of his struggles, although most of his neighbors treated him with great disgust, there was one fellow who offered him a bit of kindness. Bob wanted to recover not only for himself, but because he wanted that bit of kindness to mean something. This kernel of kindness had grown in his breast and he desired to live in a way that honored all that it meant to him. For some reason I entered into a profound connection with Bob when I heard him tell his story in a choked-up voice.

And so, upon thinking about what it takes to inspire, these are two of the ideas that came to me–a narrative of a struggle that was eventually overcome, coupled with a vision of why the particular form of success was of value not only to the struggling individual but to others as well.

In my next post I’ll try to convey other insights I have achieved as a result of that delightful night in NYC. In the meantime, I hope you’ll take a little time to get acquainted with the fresh set of inspiring musical numbers now available on Free of Fear’s brand new album, See You On The Otherside. It is available for free at https://freeoffear.com/album_download.

———————————
Some people will enjoy reading this blog by beginning with the first post and then moving forward to the next more recent one; then to the next one; and so on. This permits readers to catch up on some ideas that were presented earlier and to move through all of the ideas in a systematic fashion to develop their emotional intelligence. To begin at the very first post you can click HERE.

“Great anger and violence can never build a nation. We are striving to proceed in a manner and towards a result, which will ensure that all our people, both black and white, emerge as victors.” (From Nelson Mandela’s speech to European Parliament, 1990.)

As I write this post, we are in the middle of South Africa’s 10-day mourning period for Nelson Mandela. Although I myself have never set foot in South Africa, I, along with millions of Americans, and millions more around the world, find our hearts merging with those of his country’s citizens. It is, of course, a period of remembrance of a man who learned to forgive his oppressors; a man who in his later years developed a smile full of wisdom and kindness; a man who could fill up Yankee Stadium with thrilling cheers; a man deeply respected.

For me, Nelson Mandela provided us an enduring inspirational lesson on conflict resolution.

Nelson Mandela and Conflict

When we attempt to come up with a brief description of a conflict, it helps to have a good definition of “conflict” at hand. On this blog, we have been using a definition derived from the DIG Conflict Model.

A conflict exists whenever the following three conditions exist:

Party A desires an act will occur.
Party A perceives that another party is likely to act in a manner that interferes with the desire.
Party A perceives that the other party would be guilty of doing something wrong if he or she carries out the interfering act.

Notice that each of the three conditions has a key word italicized—desire for the first condition, interferes for the second, and guilty for the third. If we take the first letter of each of these key words and put them together, they spell DIG; hence the DIG Conflict Model’s name.

Party A, in the above definition, indicates the individual who is theoretically engaged in a conflict and from whose perspective the conflict will first be described.

For most of Mandela’s life, the major conflict that existed in his country can be briefly described as follows:

The large majority of people living in South Africa desired to have basic civil rights but interfering with this was the government’s apartheid laws and policies. The majority of the people felt that those supporting the laws and policies of apartheid were, and would continue to be, guilty of doing a terrible wrong.

Many of the people who participated in the conflict experienced its guilt condition as so large that their attention was focused mostly on that particular condition, and it became hard to focus their attention on solving the desire-interfering problem. To understand this better, we have to take a couple of minutes to see how each of the three conditions of a conflict can vary in size and how that affects efforts to resolve a conflict.

The Three Conflict Conditions Can Vary in Size

The three conditions of a conflict (desire, interference and guilt) are not just present. Each of these conditions, like the sides of a triangle, can vary in size.

The Variability of Desires. People have different desires, some not as strong as others. We can get a feel for this by considering the following scenarios:

Over the course of a few months, Juliet meets four young suitors at different times. First she meets Tom, spends an hour with him at a nice café, and the next day she has no desire to ever see him again. A few weeks later she meets Dick at a play, and the next day she has a small but not overwhelming desire to see him. The following week, during a stroll through a lush park, she is introduced to Harry. The next day she finds that she wants to see him even more then she wants to see Dick. And then she meets Romeo. Juliet’s passion leads her to follow Romeo through the gates of death.

Let’s say twenty-four hours after each of these four meetings, Juliet is asked to rate on a zero to ten-point scale how much she wants to see each. Zero indicates she has no desire to see the guy, and ten indicates the greatest desire she can imagine. For Tom, she provides a rating of zero; for Dick, a three; for Harry, a six; and for Romeo, a ten.

Once a person desires something a certain amount, over time it can change. We all know cases in which both the bride and groom swear at their wedding that they desire to be together for the rest of their lives, and then after a few years, they have no desire to be with one another for another minute, let alone for the rest of their lives.

The process of asking people to rate from one to ten how much they desire something allows us to measure this kind of variability. A similar process can be used to measure the other two conditions for a conflict—interfering and guilt.

The Variability of Interfering Acts. Recall that in a conflict an interfering act refers to a party doing something that gets in the way of Party A’s desire. With that in mind, consider the following scenarios:

Juliet wants to marry Romeo. Her father gives his blessing and says, “Marry him whenever you want.” Juliet is asked to rate on a zero to ten- point scale the degree she perceives that her father will act in a manner that is interfering with what she wants. Zero indicates “not at all interfering.” Ten indicates “completely interfering.” With a delightful smile, she indicates a zero.

Let’s change the scenario a bit. Juliet wants to marry Romeo. Her father says she can see him as much as she wants six days a week. He goes on to say that on Fridays she can also see Romeo as much as she wants, but only during the day. From suppertime to bedtime on Fridays she will meet some other eligible men in the city. If after three months of this plan, Juliet still wants to marry Romeo, her father tells her he will give his blessing. Although Juliet wants to marry Romeo right away, she indicates that it appears to her that her father’s plan will not be completely interfering with what she wants by giving it a rating of three.

How about this scenario? Juliet wants to marry Romeo. Her father forbids her from ever seeing Romeo and has hired some thugs to kidnap and transport him to Australia, thousands of miles away. Juliet indicates that it appears to her that her father’s interfering act is a ten.

These three scenarios illustrate that, like desires, interfering activities can be perceived as varying on a scale from zero to ten. So too can the guilt condition.

The Variability of Guilt. Like the desires and incompatibility conditions of conflicts, people don’t perceive guilt as just present or absent, but rather they perceive varying degrees of it. For example, let’s say Juliet passionately desires to marry Romeo, but discovers that the prince has ordered that anyone marrying Romeo will be beheaded, along with all of her family. Under this set of circumstances, Juliet may not blame her father at all if he refuses to give her his permission.

What about a different set of circumstances? Juliet passionately wants to marry Romeo. In this case, the prince is not involved. Juliet’s father earns a meager living running a grocery store in town. Many of his customers hate Romeo. If they were to hear that Juliet’s father gave his permission for her to marry Romeo, they would stop shopping at his store.

The whole family depends on the income from the store. Juliet believes her family would somehow survive, but they would lose the house that they love and have to make other major sacrifices. In this case, Juliet may blame her father for refusing to give his permission for her to get married, but perhaps just a little bit.

In our final example, Juliet’s father refuses to give her his permission to marry even though everyone in town likes Romeo and thinks he would make a great husband for her. When Juliet asks her father for an explanation for his refusal, he replies, “Because I said so!”

Under this set of circumstances, Juliet may believe her father is completely to blame for his interfering act. In the case of so large a guilt condition, Juliet may begin to focus on doing something terrible to make him “pay” for his guilt. Her angry emotions can make it difficult to think rationally and creatively.

Back to the Mandela Conflict

In 1980, when Nelson Mandela was still in prison, I spoke for over an hour to a person of color about his views on South Africa’s apartheid policies. The entire time he was very angry and he spoke about all of the awful things that those supporting apartheid were guilty of doing. Each time I tried to get him to discuss what the country can do to move forward in order to achieve his desire to obtain civil rights for all of the people of South Africa, he would begin to answer me, but before he could finish his first sentence, he switched back to talking about another set of actions that supporters of South Africa were guilty of.

I believe this type of discussion was typical of many of those embroiled in this conflict until Mandela was finally released after 27 years in prison. Mandela spoke with authority when he modeled for his people a very different form of discussion, a form of discussion that was less angry, less blaming of who did what, and more on how to achieve the desire for civil rights and how to end the interfering acts of apartheid supporters. He spoke with authority in part because the people knew that if Mandela could forgive after how he suffered in prison for so long, perhaps they could find a way to do so as well.

Oh, there were those who wanted revenge despite hearing Mandela’s approach. Would have more violence bred even more violence?

In the end, the South African people decided overwhelmingly that Mandela’s approach was the wiser of the two paths that laid before them. Yes, there remains many serious problems that remain for the South African people to solve. But the people have spoken, and there are many signs that exist to say they were right. Today, according to a recent Gallup poll:

In closing, I want to leave you with the words of former President Bill Clinton. Upon being interviewed about the death of Mandela, Clinton said:

“His enduring power is that he showed us that there is truth and freedom in forgiveness and in the mental and emotional discipline to live in the present and think of the future.”