Meeting his father Chick Benetto’s Intrapersonal Conflicts
48 I knew where this was going. I knew it immediately. The only person who
had a harder time giving up my baseball career than me was my father Albom 159.
His father forces him to play in Old Timers Game, his father keeps on insisting him since he still has the ambition to make Chick as a professional baseball
player or at least Chick works in the work field which is related to baseball. Chick is already tired to be the victim of his father’s ambition. When his father leaves him
after he loses his baseball career, Chick has just realized that his father never appreciates his achievements and even his efforts. Chick tries to state his arguments
for not joining Old Timers Game like what his father wants. However, his father is a good debater. He can always win the debate with his own ways. He always knows
how to force his son to chase his ambition. It traps Chick in a conflict. The conflict belongs to double approach-avoidance conflict; Worchel and
Cooper explain that double approach-avoidance conflict is a conflict which involves a person in choosing between two goals, each of which has positive and negative
aspects Worchel and Cooper 461. Chick can choose to ignore his father’s wish and do what he really wants to do without any dictations from his father although the
consequence is that he will never get his father’s love like what he always dreams of. On the contrary, Chick can also choose to take part and join the Old Timers Game to
pursue his father’s ambition but if he does that, he never has self-determination and his father will always dictate his life. The following quotation shows how he ends the
conflict. PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI
49 There are a lot of things I wished I’d asked him. Instead, I said I’d call him
back. I hung up the phone. And I let the opportunity my father had “finagled” dance around my head… I tried to focus. I tired to wrap my mother’s birthday
party around me. But my father, a thief in many ways, had robbed me of my concentration. Before the paper plates were tossed, I was down in the
basement, on the phone, booking the last plane out… I had to lie to everyone there. It wasn’t hard. I wore a pager for work, and I called it from downstairs
phone, then went upstairs quickly. When the pager went off in front of Chaterine, I acted annoyed, grumbling about them “bothering me on a
Saturday.”… I faked the return phone call. Faked my dismay. Faked a story about having to fly to a client who could only do the meeting on a Sunday,
and wasn’t it awful? Albom 160-161. To end the conflict, Chick applies competition. Blake and Mouton explain
competition as putting one’s own concerns above those relationships and is characterized by minimal concern for others’ feelings qtd. in Fitzpatrick and Noller
106. Chick chooses to join the Old Timers game. Once again, Chick ignores his family’s feeling who wants to spare the time with him and Chick also ignores his
own feeling. Chick is willing to do his father’s command because deep in his heart, Chick is still longing for his father’s love and he still wants to try to get it.