I’ve never done well when it comes to conflict.

I was born a twin, and the most conflict I’ve been involved in is the fights my brother and I would get into when we were younger. Other than that, I’ve never gotten physical or even had a verbal argument with anyone. Ever.

I’m not aggressive, and I don’t want to be.

In middle school, I was moved down to “B” team in volleyball because I wasn’t aggressive enough. How can you not be aggressive enough to play volleyball? That still gets me to this day. But yeah, I was that kid.

I quit basketball because I didn’t like having to use my elbows or “go hard in the paint,” and I know I wasn’t intimidating.

I tried wrestling in high school – somehow I let my dad and brother convince me that was a good idea. They were wrong. Needless to say, I quit after a month because that was entirely too much contact for me, and there was no way I would ever get comfortable trying to knock my opponent down, on purpose.

Oh, and when I was in high school, a girl told one of my friends she was going to fight me because she thought I looked at her weird. I promise I never looked at her in a way that implied I wanted to fight her, but she was twice my size, so I was already planing to outrun her if she started swinging.

My mom suggested I use my lunch tray to fend her off, but it was made of Styrofoam, so that wasn’t going to work.

Eventually, the issue was resolved. We even played Powder Puff football together and shared some laughs.

There have also been a few situations since I’ve enrolled here that could have ended in some sort of conflict, but my fight or flight instinct always chose that latter. I’m basically an expert at fleeing to avoid conflict.

But, I’ve learned this probably isn’t the best way to go through life. Sometimes I wonder how far I could have gone in basketball had I sucked it up and threw an elbow or two. Actually, that’s a lie. I really don’t like basketball; that’s way too much running for me. But you get the point.

Aggression can be a good thing, as long as you go about expressing it in a healthy way, and by healthy I mean don’t go looking for fights or throw punches at anyone who makes you mad. That’s just chaos; find a way to let it out without hurting anyone.

Go ahead and talk out your problems or be a little aggressive to get something you want. If done in a healthy way, you won’t hurt others, but if you don’t do it at all, you could end up regretting it.