I’ve been working alongside my Dad on our family farm for a few years now. I’ve always worked with him/for him, but in the last five years or so, I’ve become more involved with the operation, and in doing so, I’ve found myself spending a lot more time with him.
I love my dad something fierce. He and I have the same demented and twisted sense of humour, and we certainly feed off of each other when we get going. I get the majority of my personality from my dad, and because we are similar in a lot of ways, we often butt heads when we work together.
My dad is the smartest man I know.
He and I had a bit of a spat recently, and reflecting on the conflict afterwards, I came to a rather stark realization. I suddenly understand that a major reason as to why we bicker, and furthermore, why our bickering quickly becomes quite heated, is because we don’t entirely understand each other when it comes to conflict.
When I’m mad about something work-wise on the farm, when I tell my dad about it, I think he sometimes perceives my anger toward a task or a broken piece of equipment as a personal attack on him. I certainly don’t mean to make my dad think or feel this way, but pondering on the matter, if I am worked up about something and am informing him, it probably seems as though I’m somehow blaming him, or am angry with him.
My dad handles and processes his anger a lot differently than I do. He tends to keep his emotions to himself and prefers to mull things over independently before he visits the issue again.
Acknowledging the different ways my dad and I not only handle but discuss a problem encouraged me to understand why we set each other off sometimes, and I imagine a lot of other folks can relate to this post. Perhaps a lot of us are confusing dislike with misunderstanding, and in the process, we are setting ourselves up for further anger and frustration.
ontheedgeofeverything 
