My name is Paudrigotuma and I worked in conflict resolution throughout my 20s and 30s.

Some of those jobs were directly with people affected by conflict and some of those were with people who

perpetrated conflict.

Some of those people had joined state armed forces or paramilitary organizations.

And when I turned 40,

I began to realize that the wind had gone out of the sales for me

in this work.

Mostly, I discerned this really through feelings of boredom.

It would go a bit like this, I'd arrive into a conflict

and hear the various sides, and then we'd begin to feel like,

well, here's the person who's going to try to reach out, and here's the person who's going to try to reach out and here's the person who

will suggest compromise and here's the person who will resist and here's the dynamic in the

room where we'd just be about to reach conclusion and someone would say something

that would place us back in a position that felt like we'd made no progress whatsoever.

And I'd seen that over and over again.

I'd dread loads of methods, you know, different ways to bring people along,

and I began to think, what is that difficulty?

I made a study of resistance,

and I began to ask people,

what is your resistance to the possibility of us arriving

at some kind of conclusion?

And often it was that there was some fear of the unknown.

...