An Interview With Riane Eisler
There will always be conflict in human affairs, because of the simple fact that I’m hungry when you’re thirsty, I want to sleep and you want to get up, I want to go left when you want to go right. The issue isn’t conflict itself, but how we deal with it.
This dusty, hot Saturday, I have the privilege of meeting a very significant person: a mad, starving, nearly naked little girl who picks through the garbage outside a whorehouse on the outskirts of a dusty Indian town.
They lived too close for harsh words. It was as if at any given minute a sharp word or careless thought could push them over some terrible edge, tearing them apart.
Her speech softened and slowed. . . . She learned to ask about family before business, to work up to her questions, not throw them in a body’s face. She learned to call blacks “mister” and “miz,” because white folks never did.
During a time of intolerance when even the children killed for righteousness and peace, Eros descended, wandering among his children of the flesh. They knew him not. Which is to say, they thought they were being very gracious to him, treating him like a god.
It never happened. . . . It was a childhood dream about being dazzled by life and about something just out of reach. A dream that sometimes comes back when you stand in the sun on a summer day and are overcome by the stillness.
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We all are tired and dirty. My sons’ faces are streaked with perspiration; their bloodshot eyes stare back at me from dark circles of dust. For an instant there is silence, until they realize we are finished. Then they race off toward the house, arguing over who will take the first shower, leaving me alone to survey the harvest.
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