According to French fabulist-poet Jean de la Fontaine (1621-1695): A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.

Don’t you think it’s normal in everyone’s life? That the more you try to avoid someone, the likelier you will run into him/her? That the more you try to avert something from happening, chances are it will happen anyway?

I remember a lady friend who was trying to make her husband quit smoking. First, no smoking indoors at home, later cutting down his daily pocket money, and other measures you can well imagine but won’t like me to mention. Of course, he did warn her: “Wife, I had given up a lot of my vices when I married you. Drinking, smoking opium, gambling and chasing women. Smoking is the only thing left. I know it’s not good and I’ll try to quit when the right time comes. But if you keep on pushing me to do it now, I’m afraid everything I have cherished in life but have done away with will all return. So make up your mind, do you want me to be my old self before we married?”

Fortunately and to the relief of their friends, the lady stopped being a fusspot. In time he quit smoking.  The two then lived together happily even after to their old age.

Unfortunately, I fear that is just what’s going to happen if the military keeps repeating its 3 holy mantras: Non-disintegration of the Union, Non-disintegration of national solidarity and Perpetuation of national sovereignty; keeps on trying to derail the constitutional amendment and peace processes, and keeps on attacking the non-Burman resistance movements with which it is supposed to be making peace.

We all know a balloon that is kept filled up with air or gas but with no outlet can only burst in the end.

Of course, not all the mistakes in the country’s peace process are made by the military. It is made by all of us, both armed and unarmed. Because we are used only to make war, not peace.

Perhaps one thing that can be done to smooth out things and prevent further unnecessary hiccups in the negotiations is we all come together, not separately, to learn how peace is made and how negotiations are conducted.

According to Getting to Yes: Negotiating agreement without giving in, “principled negotiation is an all purpose strategy. Unlike other strategies, if the other side learns this one, it does not become more difficult to use; it becomes easier.”

I think that’s just what the doctor ordered. So why don’t we all try it? And if we find out it doesn’t work, we can all happily go back to war, the way we are more at home with.