One of the greatest challenges of a difficult conversation is finding and holding on to our center — to not be buffeted about by the opinions, emotions or tactics of others, but to stay present in the moment, possessed of our full capacities for creative response.
I think most would agree that finding and holding our center can be an even greater challenge in a world that feels increasingly unstable and conflicted, where there are so many cultural battle lines being drawn it’s impossible not to stumble over one of them and find yourself in unfriendly territory.
So how do we do it? How do we find and keep our center even in the midst of conflict and chaos? The experience of my latest podcast guest, Janessa Gans Wilder, may be instructive. She found her center in the middle of a war zone.
An intelligence analyst for the CIA, Janessa spent 21 months in Iraq from 2003 to 2005 — the height of the insurgency. Her job was to make sense of the enemy, to understand their motives, tactics, strategies, funding sources and leadership — all to help the US wage a better, smarter, more effective war against them.
It was a job that brought her to the brink of despair. It was all too much: The death, the maiming, the near impossibility of collecting good information, the nights made sleepless by the incoming mortars of the enemy and, even worse, the outgoing mortars from US forces that “shatter you from the inside out.”
For Janessa, the first battle of Fallujah — sparked by the killing and mutilation of four American Blackwater guards, their burnt bodies hung on a bridge spanning the Euphrates river — was the worst of it. “It felt like the world was coming to an end and I couldn’t do anything to help...I just felt so powerless and helpless...I was drained emotionally, physically, spiritually, on every level.”
Janessa had reached what journalist and author Amanda Ripley calls the saturation point: “The point in a conflict where the losses seem heavier than the gains.” In common parlance, it’s when we’ve “hit bottom,” when we finally accept that the old ways aren’t working, but don’t yet know what else to do.
While it may not feel like it at the time, reaching the saturation point can be a very good thing. It’s an opportunity, says Ripley, “for a shift.” At a loss for what else to do, we become open to new possibilities we’d not considered before.
For Janessa, that new possibility came as she stood on a rooftop overlooking the Euphrates river:
“From the roof of the house, you could see the beautiful Euphrates, and a couple miles away the military base, and then the river bends around and flows downward. I was so struck by the beauty...and then I was struck by the quiet. The only thing I could hear was the water gurgling by, which was so incredible, because the noise of war is so intense and constant. So that contrast with the quiet just took my breath away. And I just sat there, wanting to be taken in.
“And what I noticed was, just a few miles downstream, this river goes right through the middle of Fallujah. And this beauty and this peace and this quiet was actually happening amidst all the bombs and noise and death and destruction. And what's so incredible about the river, is that, in Al Anbar Province, it's just desert everywhere except where the Euphrates cuts a path, and on either side of that path there's a couple hundred yards of greenery, where the farmers take the irrigation, and beyond that there’s just desert as far as the eye can see.
“So not only was this river beautiful, it was the life-giving force of this whole region. And so I was just marveling at that contrast, just, oh my gosh, how could this have been happening in that same space of all the death and destruction?
“And then the thought came to me: Which will you choose?
“And I was so taken aback. I mean, it's a choice? I could choose this scene of life and peace and beauty?
“And I just said out loud, ‘I choose the river.’”
At that moment, says Janessa, a weight lifted from her shoulders. She’d regained a calm and clarity of mind the war had taken from her. She’d found her center.
After choosing the river Janessa stopped being an analyst and took a new position with the US Embassy, assisting the Iraqi government in making the transition to a democracy. And later, after coming home from Iraq, she founded a non-profit dedicated to global peace-building, which she named The Euphrates Institute.
At the end of her story I asked Janessa, what is the centering power of the river? What does it symbolize? For her it symbolizes the most powerful force of all, the force of life: the constant flow of creative energy that nourishes and builds, rather than depletes and destroys:
“I had just left the most in-your-face display of power I’d ever experienced...and I realized, no matter how many of those freaking bombs went off, the river was completely unaffected by it. And I thought, well, which is more powerful? The noise and bombs, or this, this effortlessly, relentlessly flowing force?’
And it became clear, said Janessa, that this force, this creative energy, is available and flowing through all our lives at every moment, and we can choose to align ourselves with it even if we can’t see it:
And you know I try to think about that...what is more powerful in this moment? Is it hatred and division and death? Or is it life? Is it hope? Is it love? And can I stand on that foundation? Can I lean into that truth, even if I don't see it?”
So here’s a recipe for keeping our center even in the midst of conflicts that seem forever out of reach of resolution: Choose the river. Say no to the fighting, the attacking, the resisting. Trust the creative force of the river rather than the destructive force of our rage and fear.
Saying yes to the river won’t make the conflict go away. It will still require living though perilous and uncertain times. But we’ll be living through them having made the one choice that can truly make a difference: To trust in each other’s capacity for kindness, and to surround those who seem to have lost that capacity with the full force of the river’s energy — the quiet but powerful presence of love, understanding and wisdom.
To hear Janessa’s further reflections on the meaning of the river, as well as some ideas for how we can bring its power into our lives, I invite you to listen to the whole 32-minute interview: