We hit a snag.

It was an ordinary evening—or so we thought—when the dinner discussion morphed into a mild debate, which then turned into a significant disagreement, just before the fight broke out. Now, it seems to have been a strange topic that neither of us really remembers at this point. We do, however, recall in crystal clear detail the feelings that accompanied the fateful conversation that seemed to go on and on and on.

In the aftermath, our first impulse is to return to the scene of the crime to uncover what the other one said or did that was totally out of bounds. Once the blunders are even marginally established, the victor can work it ’till the cows come home. As we get older and hopefully wiser, we find that those cows never even left the barn—victories are becoming more brief and less important with each passing year. But that hasn’t stopped us—maybe just slowed us down a bit.

In the end, this silly routine boils down to “my view or yours”—the proverbial, my way or the highway. The funny thing is that our perspectives and intense beliefs are really nothing more than accumulated patterns that we have simply made-up, adapted and adopted, or embellished over the years. Then we repeat them ad-nauseum trying to convince, or sometimes even coerce, the other into agreement. That process usually ends-up in a shut-down. In a simplistic way of looking at it, that’s what wars are made of—mine vs yours.

Instead of one saying “it’s mine!” and the other emphatically shouting “fine!” we want to flip things around. How about helping each other before it’s too late by saying “Watch out! don’t step on that mine!”

Will we ever outgrow this?

The answer, of course, is yes . . . but the immediate next question is when?

We figure this happens to just about everyone on this planet, except for a few very unusual folks and a saint or two. Conflicts have been happening the exact same way for centuries, perhaps eons—surely even cavemen ended a grunted disagreement by throwing rocks at each other.

Lately, we have been working at uncovering some of the true motives behind those skirmishes and battles, the rarely seen culprits—those devilish rascals like power and control and of course, the ringleader of them all, unhealthy ego! We believe it’s possible to untangle that mess, but the task isn’t for the faint-hearted. Rather than “give and take,”conflict taunts us to take a stand and give a speech from the soapbox. There is no question about it, partnerships fail daily because the tangle of knots was just a little bit too tight.

Territorial squabbles and even fights, are so pervasive within human relationships that we decided to write a song about it, and you might guess what it’s called. Check out our story/song called Mine . . . but don’t get into a fight over it!