On Trying to Love
(During the Holidays)
Yesterday was the fourth time in two weeks that a client teared up while discussing the impending Thanksgiving doom. That's not counting the friends who have called me, each with some version of "Dessy… what the f*ck do I do?!" Every holiday season brings its share of familial tension, but this year feels different. The air is thick with unspoken grievances—political fault lines carved deeper by an election with the sharpest of claws, divergent realities collapsing straw scaffolds of family peace.
What compels me to write this is not the individual cases—though every one of them is heartbreaking enough on its own—but the pattern that emerges when we zoom out. I watch founders and executives navigate similar dynamics within three-person startups and three-thousand-strong organizations. Teams split along invisible rifts of ideology and methodology, each side becoming increasingly certain of its rightness, its necessity, its heroic stance against the threatening Other. Each of us, secretly or not-so-secretly, certain that we know best. The same neural circuitry that makes us protect loved ones also compels us to guard our values and defend our cherished beliefs of what is true and good and real—as if they were a baby three feet from a bear.
René Girard, the French philosopher and anthropologist who studied the mimetic nature of human desire and conflict, observed that societies tend to maintain peace through a mechanism of scapegoating1. We unite against a common enemy, channeling our collective tensions onto a sacrificial victim. In ancient times, this would often mean a literal sacrifice. Today, it manifests in subtler ways: the relative whose political views make them persona non grata, the team member whose questioning of established practices marks them as 'difficult,' the part of ourselves we've learned to exile because it doesn't fit our chosen narrative.
What happens when we can no longer agree on who the scapegoat should be? When each group has its own designated Other? The mechanism breaks down. We find ourselves locked in what Girard termed ‘mimetic rivalry’ᅳan escalating cycle of reciprocal violence, whether physical, psychological, orᅳZeus forbidᅳboth.
I see this play out in the trembling jaw of my client Maria2 as she describes dreading the moment her brother-in-law inevitably brings up election results. I hear it in the voice of Dimitry, a startup founder, relating how his senior leadership team has splintered over AI strategy; each faction convinced the other is steering the company (possibly even the world) toward catastrophe. Both Maria and Dimitry are exasperated, worn down, angered by what they perceive to be inevitable conflict at every corner. Different contexts, same pattern: our tendency to project our shadows onto those who challenge our worldview.
The Shadow, Jung tells us, is not just the parts of ourselves we'd rather not seeᅳit's where we store our unlived potential. When we project this unspoken—sometimes even unthought—narrative onto others, we're not just defending against what we fear; we're also running from what we might become. Our family member whose politics repulse us might be voicing doubts we've refused to examine. The colleague whose methods we decry might be expressing a creative wildness we've learned not to feel. Our most visceral reactions point precisely to where our growth meets its edge.
This happens to me too, particularly when coaching others through conflict. The person who seems inflexible awakens my irritation. Initially, I'm sure it's because they're wrong. Then, I get honest, admitting they remind me of my own rigidity, the one that masks an even deeper insecurity. The founder who can't stop micromanaging mirrors my difficulty with letting go. The loved one whose temper flares expresses a disagreeableness I only wish I could allow myself to feel. These moments of recognitionᅳif we can stay present with their discomfortᅳbecome invitations to integration, not reasons for division.
But how do we begin such integration when the stakes feel this high, when we're convinced that the Otherᅳwhether across the dinner table or in the conference roomᅳthreatens not just our comfort but our livelihood, our identify and rights, or even our fundamental sense of reality?
The egoic self, that part of us that maintains our chosen narrative, tends to identify with goodness and light while projecting darkness onto what it rejects. Still, true awareness requires us to hold both, to recognize that we contain multitudes and are not all that different from one another. The relative whose views seem disgusting probably believes they're voting for the greater good. The team member pushing a controversial strategy likely thinks they're saving the company. Everyone is, as I often remind myself, the hero of their own story.
I become cautious here as I advocate we find ways to sit at a table with someone who represents much of what we believe to be wrong with the world. Not everyone wants to find a middle ground. There are ideologies, political systems, even families where being Other is provocation enough for violence. If you find yourself in such a situation, by all means: get out. But for the rest of us, in situations that are not a matter of literal survival, what I am suggesting is that an encounter with tension, even aggression, does not have to result in trauma. You also don’t need to agree or sacrifice your deeply-held values at the altar of artificial harmony. That's just another form of violence, only this time directed inward. What I am suggesting, if you feel well enough and grounded enough at the given moment, is to get curious about your reactivity. What ifᅳbefore we launch into defending our position or silently seethingᅳwe pause to notice the heat in our chest, the tightening in our jaw, the impulse to fight or flee or freeze? These nervous system pings are messengers, doing us a favor, pointing us toward what is most salient to our organism.
When Maria told me about her brother-in-law, I asked her what she imagined was at stake. "Everything!" she said, then caught herself and laughed. "Well, maybe not everything, but...my children's future?" Her voice cracked on that last word, and I watched as awareness dawned: he probably believes he's protecting his children's future too. Recognizing this didn't dissolve their disagreement, nor did it necessarily help Maria like him more, but it shifted something essential in how she perceived the fervor of his beliefs.
Perspectival shifts are not a guarantee of a happy ending. Maria's brother-in-law will likely still say something inflammatory over turkey. Dimitry's leadership team will likely still continue to clash over strategy. But something else becomes possible when we stop casting ourselves in a battle between light and dark, good and evil, right and wrong. We discover that the real possibility lies not in changing the Other but in our capacity to remain present and begin to shift the lens through which we regard them.
I observe this in founders navigating their first serious team conflicts. If they're lucky, eventually they realize their role isn't to pick a side or even forge consensus but to hold space for different perspectives to coexist long enough that something new might emerge. The best leaders don't eliminate tension; they metabolize it, transforming its energy into forward momentum. The same principle applies at the holiday dinner table, though with a crucial difference: there, we're not responsible for steering the organizational ship or hitting quarterly targets. Our only real obligation is to our integrityᅳand I don't mean here the brittle kind that refuses to bend, but the gentle strength that comes from knowing we can stay present with discomfort without letting it break us.
For myself, I hold an obligation that goes beyond mere presence: an orientation to kindness and care. While I'm allergic to platitudes that paper over differences and pretend everything to be okay, I hold a fierce belief that extending our heartᅳespecially toward those who challenge us mostᅳis the scariest, most vulnerable, most important task before us. Yes, on Thanksgiving, but also alwaysᅳif our world is to have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving.
Care is not weakness, though our current narratives often frame it that way. Instead, it is one of the strongest and bravest things any of us can do. It means having the courage to remain soft in a world that keeps telling us to harden, to maintain our capacity for wonder even as we navigate profound disagreement. At the heart of every conflictᅳwhether in boardrooms or dining roomsᅳlies a human puzzle that no amount of logic alone can resolve. We're not merely rational beings exchanging facts and figures; we're creatures of story and emotion, each carrying entire universes of experience that shape the realities we perceive and the humans we become.
The most successful individuals I've observedᅳthe ones who build resilient teams and loving familiesᅳlearn to move with rather than against the tensions they encounter. They develop the strength to stay engaged even when it feels easier to shut down or lash out. They learn (and teach) that real resilience is a form of antifragility, a way of maintaining flexibility while becoming permeable to what matters most.
Amidst all the inherited and newly emerging complexities of the winter holidays, I find myself oddly eager. It's not that I think we'll suddenly bridge our deepest divides or solve the thorniest problems just because we suddenly decide to be a little bit kinder. It might be just my little bubble, but these days I see more people understanding that the only real path available to any of us is to show up with both backbone and heart. It's not easy, nor is it meant to be. Yet it is how we grow, individually and collectively, into the fuller versions of ourselves. Maybe that is exactly what is happening at this point in our civilization: an evolution toward greater consciousness and care or a dissolution into primordial reactivity that will swallow us whole.
The world needs us to be bigger than our fears, more nuanced than our initial reactions, more courageous than our impulse to withdraw. Neither perfect nor unshakeable, just present, engaged, and willing to be surprised. It all starts with the next conversation, the next moment of tension, the next opportunity to choose curiosity over certainty, care over contempt. Please pass the (optionally vegan) gravy.