clarity among confrontation

There is a line in a movie, Spanglish, that stayed with me for a long time. Simple line - “In the midst of confrontation, she found clarity.” It is a movie about a Spanish housekeeper in an American household and her daughter – in a pivotal conflict between them, where the daughter humiliates the mother in public, the mother finds clarity in middle of that conflict and asks the crucial question that will define their relationship and identity - "Is what you want for yourself, to become someone very different than me?".

I ended up working few hours, despite being holiday today. In middle of very ambiguous or confusing or conflicting situation, I could find enough courage and clarity to take control and somehow paint a picture of where we are and what we should be doing. 

I wonder how this works. Many times during such situations, people need confidence that someone would help to find a way through it and that confidence not coming from anyone around will make it progressively worse. Gathering the facts quickly, separating the signal from the noise, getting to what are the most important problems that we should be solving, a core thread that connects it all together – I guess this is what happens, but most times all these processing happens without conscious methodical analysis. I have few such past experiences where I could say something like “Hold on, let me attempt to explain” and then paint a picture. Maybe this is what experience does, to create such mental muscles.

Now that reminds me of this “Let me talk” from Kevin De Bruyne, who is one of the world’s best midfielders, but a silent, mild mannered footballer. He would have found clarity in confrontation.