Mediation.
It's everywhere we want it to be.

Sometimes we forget we are mediators, especially in dealing with other family members. But the techniques we use in mediation also work to difuse a conflict in our personal lives.

Recently, my son drove from Oregon, with his two cats, to pick up some items I had been holding in storage. (Was it really more than two years ago that I put him and his cats on the midnight flight to Argentina? It was a scene straight out of the movie "Casablanca" except I didn't shoot a German officer.) He was on a tight schedule and planned to be here for about 24 hours. Like his dad, he is very organized and inventoried his storage boxes and what was in them.

He was particularly anxious to retrieve some disks which he uses to program music and other activities in his computer. He found the box, but no program disks. He became increasingly agitated as he searched our "computer room" for the disks. The disks were expensive, he said, and were the prime reason he drove across country to retrieve them. He had just wasted two weeks and said some other things about my lack of responsibility.

I could tell he was angry, and suddenly, without realizing it, I went into mediation mode. I affirmed his anger and frustration, without rebuttal, and assured him that if they were in the room, I would find them and send them to him. I allowed him to vent without expanding the discussion into other areas of our relationship. In a few moments, he was calm again and seemed to accept he did not have his disks. We went outside, where I said hello to his cats, sitting in crates on the front seat beside him. We parted on friendly terms.

Five days later, he called. He had a safe and uneventful trip to the west coast. "Oh by the way," he said. "I found the disks in another box." We laughed, and I said nothing about his anger. Now he is setting up another sound studio, happily using his disks. Mediation. It's everywhere we want it to be.

Chuck Hardwick