On Working Small
A couple weeks ago, one of you spotted the phrase “compulsion to reconcile” and asked, knowingly but not unkindly, if I am still serving as a mediator.
I am. I continue to work through my local Dispute Resolution Center (DRC), and I continue to love it. Why?
1. Because it is so hard.
Mediating disputes (between divorcing couples, co-parents, colleagues, and neighbors) is not about being a fixer…or a voyeur—the two most common misconceptions.
Mediating is about finding the vexingly narrow path between these two temptations. It’s about guiding people who have often been their worst selves with one another to find ways, however small, not to reconcile but to co-exist more peacefully.
Because the risk of over-functioning sits side-by-side with the risk of under-functioning, mediating requires the same level of concentration that, say, inching along an icy trail on a sheer slope might demand. And that—the inability to think about anything else (my family, my business, the wider world) for hours at a time—is a big part of the appeal for me. Just like when I’m on an actual cliff face, I get a break from my own dogged worries.
2. Because it is so small.
Like many of you, I’m haunted by the big stuff: creeping autocracy, unregulated technology, the resurgence of Christian nationalism.* These threats don’t feel the least bit theoretical to me. But in considering how to curb them, it’s often very difficult to know where to start. In the face of it all, despair and/or Netflix beckon.
On the other hand: helping two people find a better way forward, right here, right now? Modifying a parenting plan so that the exchange of a kindergartener happens at a playground rather than the parking lot of a police station? That is (more often than not) super doable.
3. And the combo—absorbing work that regularly delivers miniature but meaningful wins—is hugely energizing.
Action begets action. I emerge from these sessions starving—the work consumes calories at an astonishing rate—but also ready to do more, including election- and legislation-related work that chips away at the big stuff. For the upcoming midterms, for example, I’m all in on election protection and ballot curing.
Look, we can’t all be our next president**, calling out corruption and addressing affordability, all while staring intently into the middle distance, lit from above, and filmed from below…
…but most of us can work small—and I for one quite like it.
Notes
*Remember my Venn Diagram from 2025? I’m feeling a lot better about it, now that Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor have just released a whole book (?!) along the same lines.
**I know he said he has “zero interest” in running. It’s the one political lie that is wholly acceptable—and in fact completely unavoidable—in electoral politics. Give it no mind. :-)
