‘Relationships are all about heart. When hearts are hurt, patience and healing balms are needed to heal them and get them back together. But it takes time. Any force used by one or both parties is counterproductive; force can never bring hearts together. Once law and order is involved in a relationship, one must consider it has crossed a point of no return.
Mutual respect and trust are the foundation of any relationship, like steel and concrete in the foundation. A relationship can survive any upheaval provided mutual respect and trust remain intact. Once these are gone, the relationship is dead and buried.
Mediators must be wise and not reactive. They must listen to both parties, and not only one party, and tread carefully and show forbearance. Any bias by the mediators will exacerbate the strife and potentially tear part the relationship. They must remember it is not their fight; their role is only to achieve reconciliation, make the two sides see common perspectives and try to bring back harmony between the two people.
Those mediators who listen to only one party, and not to both, and fully believe that party and make opinions based on what that party tells them, without verifying the facts from the other side, run a huge risk of getting blinded to the truth. They become a party to the strife, and contributory to the mess.
When a plane gains altitude above the ground, one can see much more than one can see on the ground. One can see far and wide. One can see many more things that are not visible on the ground surface; one can see what lies across those walls at the airport and then the hills and then the mountains; the whole perspective changes. That does not mean that when one is on the ground, one’s perspective is wrong; it only means that one’s perspective on the ground is limited. Similarly, one’s judgement about a strained relationship will be dependent on the experience, forbearance and the wisdom of the person, which all come with age, generally. Young and inexperienced people are generally reactive, with limited vision. They must seek wisdom of older and experienced people before even getting involved as mediators’ … Bill K Koul