Win Win

Gratitude 6/22/2025

I am grateful for the gift of a new day.

My heart is filled with gratitude for the many blessings I have.

I will appreciate the small joys and express my thanks in all circumstances.

Let my attitude of gratitude bring joy to others.

This morning I am thinking about those times in my life where conflicts have been resolved with a win win solution. I am so grateful for people who are able to negotiate conflicts with serious problems and resolve them in a way that actually fixes the problem and doesn’t leave festering wounds that later become inflamed.

It is so satisfying to use overwhelming force to make something stop. We see it in action movies all the time. A good guy beats up or kills a bad guy. “Go ahead, make my day.” There may be a lot of bravado, destruction, and bruises, but one side, usually the righteous side, prevails. I finally watched “Die Hard” last Christmas. It’s satisfying, but it isn’t real.

In real life, if you don’t satisfy both sides of a conflict, you pay a heavy price sometimes not immediately, but a price will be paid. The resolution of World War I is a great example. Germany was crushed and humiliated with heavy debts that they could not pay. The United States wanted to withdraw from the world and refused to join the League of Nations.

As these stars aligned, it was a golden opportunity for someone like Hitler to rise to power. He restored a sense of pride among the German people by making other nations, the previous “incompetent” German regime, and vulnerable people like homosexuals, gypsies, people with disabilities, and most all the Jews, enemies that were the cause of all Germany’s problems. The media was the enemy of the people, so you couldn’t believe anything, especially if it was critical of the Reich. Over 17 million civilians and military people had died in World War I, but that was nothing compared to the 60-80 million estimated deaths in World War II.

When World War II ended with the German surrender in May 1945 and Japan’s surrender after the United States dropped two Atomic Bombs on Japan in August 1945, the people who resolved World War II, took a different approach from the one taken after WWI. It included the Marshall Plan, which rebuilt Europe. The United Nations was also established to maintain international peace and security, give humanitarian assistance to those in need, protect human rights, and uphold international law. Instead of punishing the vanquished, the idea was to build back better and give everyone a chance to succeed. People were left with their dignity.

This led to democratic Germany, which reunited East and West, in the late 1980s, to becoming a major economic stabilizing power in the European Union. German cars, pottery, electronics, and renewable energy products are top quality. It also led to Japan being a key democratic and economic power in East Asia. Right after the War, “Made in Japan” was a tagline for cheap and shoddy goods. But beginning in the 1970s, electronics, pottery, and cars made in Japan are the highest quality. Of course there have been conflicts, but the resolution of WWII, was basically a win win for the world.

Lincoln also set up this type of resolution in his Second Inaugural Address in 1865 right before Lee surrendered. It wasn’t about retribution and punishment of the vanquished. Instead, he proclaimed, "With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

Another tiny example of a win win solution is from my own life. I started teaching at Big Walnut School District at the 8th grade building that had been the old school in Center Village, a really tiny farming community in rural Ohio. But Delaware County, Ohio was growing by leaps and bounds. It turns out to be one of the fastest growing locations in the the United States. The next year, I got a full time job and the 7th and 8th grade was in the windowless open classroom, the new school that had been built as an elementary school. The 6th grade was moved to an old school in Galena, another small rural community.

In the first few weeks of school, my students were sitting back to back within just a few feet of students in other classrooms. Changing classes as you do in middle school was a NIGHTMARE! There were no lockers for kids. Teachers were shouting over each other. In just a few weeks, temporary walls went up. NO ONE was happy.

The middle school teachers were ready to strike and demanded the administration DO SOMETHING. There were lot of ideas that involved someone suffering at the expense of the majority. So much anger. No one could see a way.

Near the end of the year, the administration set a meeting to reveal the plans for the next year. Everyone, including optimistic me, expected to be incredibly frustrated. But instead, the adminstration had done its work and studied the situation. They had decided to rennovate the old high school in Sunbury and turn it into BW Intermediate for the 7th and 8th grade with individual classrooms, and the open classroom building would once again become an elementary.

It was astonishing leaving that meeting. EVERYONE was satisfied. There was such a sense of relief. The biggest complainers among the teachers were surprised and couldn’t think of anything bad. It was a win win win for the middle school teachers, the elementary, and the administration! It actually solved the problem, left everyone with their dignity, and no one was “punished.”

In a win win resolution not everyone gets everything they want, but everyone gets something they want, enough to build on. People are not left feeling humiliated, completely defenseless, impoverished, or beaten down.

Parents know this and teachers definitely know this. When kids fight, to resolve the conflict, you have to be smart and figure out what caused the fight and what both sides need to resolve it. You not only figure out “who started it” but WHY, what was the root cause. Oftentimes you find out that the conflect was a total misunderstanding, or that the party who you thought started it, did not. Occasionally you discover that one side is just wrong, but they still have to leave with some dignity. A great mediator helps the one who is wrong truly see how and why they were wrong and apologize and then help them find ways to act differently to make amends.

Real life is not a zero sum game. I didn’t undertand what that meant for the longest time. I had to really think about it. It means that, like in the card game War, chess or poker, if one person wins and gets everything; the other loses and gets nothing.

Although many games are zero sum, non zero sum contests include football, baseball, basketball, elections, and school. These are all non-zero-sum contests because even though there may be winners and losers, outcomes can benefit multiple participants and teams at the same time. Students are evaluated on their improvment, not just on their final scores. And more than one student can get an A. Non-zero-sum contests encourage collaboration and teamwork that can improve the entire team’s chance of winning. Multiple participants can shine allowing for shared success.

In team sports, although there are winners and losers, the losers are not vanquished and just die or go away. They admit defeat and “suffer” the loss. But then they study where they could have been better and live to fight another day. In some cases, as did the Oakland A’s, told in the Michael Lewis book and movie, Money Ball, they come back to win based on intelligent analysis. In other cases, they buy the best players from the other teams. LeBron James led the Miami Heat, the Cleveland Cavaliars, and then the LA Lakers to victory. The United States recruited several German scientists after WWII, to work on making the U.S. Military the world power.

In life like every parent, I want everyone, my family members, my daughters, my granddaughter, to get an equal piece of the pie, a fair shot. If one person or group gets all and members of another group get nothing, that causes such hatred and resentment that will last for generations.

If a bully takes your lunch money day after day, by threatening you, you don’t just merrily go on your way, admit you are weak, and look forward to your next encounter with the bully. You find ways to avoid the bully, to humiliate the bully, to make that person pay dearly at some point.

When you bomb something to smithereens, destroy people’s homes, take away their livihoods, humiliate them and leave them with no dignity, that may solve a temporary problem, and it may be very satisifying… for a short time. But in the long run it creates a nightmarish atmosphere of fear, and intense hatred, for which you will pay dearly over generations.

I’m so grateful for those people who are smart enough and patient enough to take the time to learn the root causes of a disagreement and find that path, which may be ever so narrow, to a solution in which everyone gets something they want and everyone maintains their dignity.