Itâs a sunny afternoon in May. The whole family is gathered around a table under a shady tree to celebrate Timmyâs birthday. Mom appears with a candlelit cake, Grandma is crying and holding her camera, and children squirm in their chairs, jealously gazing at the birthday kid. Excitement ripples through the crowd, waiting for Momâs signal.
âHappy birthday to you / Happy birthday to you / Happy birthday, little Timmy / Happy birthday toââ
But no one sings the last note. They leave it hanging.
* * *
As you read that story, did you subconsciously fill in the last note with âyou?â Maybe you even sang it out loud?
Most people will experience a strong sense of annoyance if they hear the song without that last note. Thereâs actually an explanation for this. In music theory, the âtonicâ is the base note that pulls all the other notes toward it. Ending the song on the tonic gives a sense of completion. The âsupertonicâ sits just above the tonic, pulling listeners like a magnet back to the tonic. In âHappy Birthday to You,â the supertonic is the âtoâ that comes before the final âyou.â Without the tonicâthe last note, âyouââthat supertonic âtoâ has a heavy sense of gravity but nowhere to land.
For those of us who have listened to popular music our whole lives, we are conditioned to search for and even expect the tonicâs resolution. When the resolution should come but doesnât, we can feel lost and even disoriented. In other words, we crave resolution.
Itâs the same in conflict. When conflict is clean and resolvesâwhen the âgood guyâ wins and the âbad guyâ gets what he deservesâthat feels like redemption. It feels as if the world is restored to the way it ought to be. When two people vocalize a problem, fight cleanly, fix the issue or misunderstanding, and hug it out as if theyâre in a scene from a nineties sitcom, that feels right to us. Something inside of us sighs with relief.
Resolution feels deeply gratifying.
However, a lot of real conflict simply doesnât play out that way. In the real world, thereâs no team of writers engineering a story line. Thereâs no season finale, when all the loose ends magically come together.
Reality commonly looks like two stags, antlers locked, unable to disentangle and unwilling to back down. Too often, there isnât a clear good guy or bad guy. We find ourselves colliding with warring, overlapping needs and interests.
Just like the stags, we usually donât fight to be cruel. We fight for legitimacy and survival. This can create an extreme and unresolvable form of conflict: impasse.
Impasse Affects Us Deeply
âPlease see me. I am trying to see you.â
âNeither of us will move. Neither of us can move the other.â
âHow do we make sense of this? Where do we go from here?â
This is the language of impasse. Impasse is when each party holds an internally consistent understanding of reality and meaning, but those understandings are utterly at odds. Itâs is an extreme type of conflict that can put us in a perpetual state of upendedness with people weâre supposed to be close to. Itâs the supertonic note with nowhere to landâa state of unresolvable difference.
Impasse often takes us to a weird in-between emotional space where we donât know how to act. Anthropologists and cultural experts have a word for being socially in-between: liminal. Liminal space is where suspension and transition happen; itâs a space where something old has passed away, but the new thing hasnât come yet. A classic example is a rite of passage ceremony where a young person is no longer to be considered a child but will be recognized as an adult. For a brief moment in that ceremony, there is a liminal space where childhood is suspended to make way for adulthood. That point of transition or border, where the old is no longer but the new is not yet, is the liminal.
Sometimes liminal spaces last a lot longer than a moment. They are meant to be temporary, yet we can get stuck in them. Impasse can cause us to get stuck in the liminal. We canât live in peace as we once had, because we are at odds, but we canât move forward, because we canât resolve things, so we find ourselves in this place that feels ambiguous, structureless, and even difficult to talk about.
When there is nothing anyone can do, when neither side is willing to budge, our inability to resolve things or move forward can short-circuit our brains and inspire strange actions.
Sometimes impasse simply gets ignored as we try to live ânormalâ lives. Impasse is the elephant in the room that everyone silently agrees to avoid. Itâs that holiday meal where everyone is loudly not talking about the issue; instead, with smiles plastered, they pretend nothing is wrong. Over time, this avoidance causes relational damage. Discussions and connections stay at surface level, and we drift apart without realizing it. We lose our ability to be close to each other.
Other times, impasse goes nuclear. It sparks terrible fights and wounds. We lash out because the unspoken issue is so important to us and we have no idea how to navigate the tension that wonât go away. It can end up looking like a battle of the bands with every band angrily blasting its own kind of music at the same time. Harmony, respect, and sense often feel impossible. When this happens, relationships can be damaged beyond repair.
No matter the outcome, impasse generally feels awful. It can seem highly risky to address or unpack. Itâs tempting to cut the journey short with a terse âletâs just agree to disagree.â
However, letâs explore a significant, important thing that happens when we say the words âwe are at an impasse.â When we name this reality, we are recognizing that we canât change the situation, and we canât convince anyone else to change it. We are in the liminal space, but we are at least both here together. Naming an impasse means we have decided not to use force to get our way. We are, for the sake of love or justice, trying to accept the unacceptable while knowing that, by definition, âaccepting the unacceptableâ is impossible.
When we accept our inability to control each other, we open a door to a set of opportunities.
We may never like conflict or be comfortable with it, but we can learn to transform it. We can learn to turn away from antagonism and instead turn toward possibility. Whether the conflict we experience is resolvable or unresolvable, we have a lot of choice in how we engage.
Three Secrets of Impasse
To be in true community with our family and neighbors who see the world differently than we do, and to have meaningful relationships and a healthy society across hard differences, we must learn to meet each other in impasse and harness its power for the better, before it gets the better of us. There are three secrets that can help us do this. These secrets of engaging impasse are not magic formulas, but practicing them can change our relationship with conflict and make it more productive.
1. Approach Every Conflict as if Itâs an Impasse
This first secret is the central idea of this book: focus on relationships, not on resolution. Yes, you read that right. Iâm suggesting that the best approach to conflict is to put off trying to resolve it. Pretend the situation is unresolvable, at least temporarily, until both parties feel theyâve had enough time to mend the relationship and feel heard. Even if you think thereâs an answer or there should be an answer, try sitting in the awkward middle space of impasse.
Why?
When we focus on finding a resolution, we often skip the important steps of actually understanding each other. When we make it our priority to really see one another, when we focus on trying honestly and openly to âgetâ where each other is coming from, resolutions will often present themselves almost as if by accident. Deepening our understanding and building relationships over and above trying to resolve issues may seem strange, but it is often more effective than trying to resolve issues directly. It helps us see the bigger picture in new and important ways.
On paper, this might seem easy, but in practice, it is incredibly challenging. We might have to work against our own instincts to make this kind of space for each other.
I grew up near the beach, and sometimes my family would drive out to the water only to encounter a metal sign bearing a riptide warning, letting us know that swimming was not allowed that day. A riptide is a phenomenon that happens when the top of the ocean water seems calm, but below the surface, there is a powerful undertow that carries swimmers away from the shore. Getting caught in one can be a terrifying experience. Usually, when someone is caught in a riptide, instinct kicks in to struggle against the tide and get to land as quickly as possible. The problem is, a riptide is too powerful. Even experienced swimmers will dangerously expend all their energy before they make it to land. To survive, some ocean experts advise, the swimmer should lie back and float; others advise swimming parallel to the shoreline. Either way, the hope is that the tide will circle back and land the swimmer on the beach. It might take a long time, and the swimmer might get washed up far away from their starting point, but working with the tide instead of fighting it can help the swimmer live to tell the tale.
Impasse can feel like getting caught in a riptide; itâs larger and more powerful than we are. Like a swimmer who encounters a riptide, when we find ourselves out to sea in a difficult conversation, we will often find that itâs ineffective to try to force resolution or fight against it. Doing so will only distract us and wear us out. Once we stop kicking and screaming to control the situation, we can slow down, study our surroundings, and access better information. We can see the bigger picture. Importantly, when we suspend the desire to resolve, we might not end up in the place we originally wanted to be, but we will have a healthier experience.
The frustrating yet amazing thing about impasse is that when we recognize that we canât change other peopleâwhen we put aside the need for controlâwe create opportunities to connect on a very human level. Saying the words âI canât change you; you canât change meâ might come with a deep sense of sorrow, but itâs also an incredible way to recognize the basic rights and dignity of our conversation partner. This doesnât mean we forget we have strong opinions; it means we recognize that we donât know everything and that we are open to learning new information. Taking this posture goes a long way in building trust.
When we approach every conflict as if itâs an impasse, instead of rushing to resolve it, we free ourselves. We free ourselves from the tension and resentment that result from people trying to control each other. We free ourselves for incredible curiosity, discovery, empathy, and relationship building. Setting aside the drive to resolve, control, or win creates a space of lower pressure, a space that helps us stop reacting and start reasoning, together. It drives a spirit of collaboration inst...
