Entangled Emotions
Making sense of those "entangled emotions", out-with war, is difficult enough - but after war, after a catastrophic condition where friends, family and neighbours turn on one and other, where everyone become either friend or foe in a conflict where desperate things were done by once familiar faces, during which the brutal and perpetual dynamic of victim verses perpetrator became disorientating and vague.
Where would you start in your attempt to reconcile those emotional entanglements of pride, hate, fear, hope, revenge and shame, to name but a few?
Or is it a case of, ‘therein lies the problem.’ Do these emotions need to be reconciled? Has it become a western obsession to try and simplify or resolve our difficult emotions or anything complex and demanding?
Have we developed a culture complex adverse? When many of us are confronted with complex issues, we tend to avoid them or make attempts to contain them, especially in a time sensitive context of peacebuilding where time means more lives suffering or the pressures felt by agencies and donors wanting positive and quantifiable results quickly, which is understandable.
However, Lederach argues complexity should be embraced as it "often brings a multiplicity of options to the surface. If we pay careful attention to those options, we can often create new ways to look at old patterns" (Lederach 2003).
UNIFORM NOVEMBER suggests that buildings are a vehicle or an old pattern to express a new and more sustainable approach to peacebuilding in communities, by not treating the entanglement, rendering them identified and acknowledged but untreated, complicated and honest. An unapologetic fabric of emotions that should be peacefully read and tolerated within these buildings, sensitively revealed to create an authentic approach to building the foundations of a new community, a place for all to call home once more.
