Everyone out there has good stories and lessons to share. It is my faith that it is one of our highest duties as human beings to reach out to connect with other human beings to identify and share those treasures within each other without exception and without judgment. Sometimes it’s not easy and it takes some deep breathing to get past crusty exteriors of ourselves and others.
Over the past year I’ve reached out to have coffee with several local FB Friends who had bristled at my political views (and vice versa). In each case, over a couple hours of conversation we found common concerns and common dreams along with that willingness to connect. Later this week I’m going to join one of those men for coffee again. Aside from his staunch views that many would consider gun-loving libertarian/conservative, he is also a dog lover, brought almost to tears by the thought of dogs who suffer. He is also a dedicated family man, a cancer survivor and a man who, many years ago, pulled himself up (with unfathomable hard work) from a place that would seem to most of us to be an impossibility.
Over the past couple of months, I also reached out to a woman who (I’m certain) gets indigestion when I speak of things like single payor health care. She is a dedicated nurse who, over several decades, worked her way through a dozen challenges that might have crushed many of us. She generously gave me the gift of hours on the phone, during which she invited me to lean hard on her to help me process a situation that felt like an emotional bludgeoning.
People we adore sometimes say stupid things. People we despise sometimes say things that are spot on. I would challenge everyone who makes an evil cartoon out of anyone else on FB to be brave, to reach out to offer an hour (in person or on Skype) to that person and strive to find and celebrate commonalities. There are 1,000 times more commonalities than there are differences in any two human beings. This is a well documented scientific fact (see my DI post attached: “The Shocking Sameness of Human Behavior”) More important, if we don’t figure out how to tamp down our tribal instincts and reach out, we are going to keep hurting each other, damaging our communities and ruining the future for our children.
I’m not religious, but it is claimed that Jesus urged us to “love one’s enemies.” That is definitely not a suggestion to join a tribe to amplify one’s hate-bombs toward one’s perceived enemies. This advice is stunningly radical and extremely difficult to follow (I think it should be posted at the entrance to the Pentagon!). One should deploy this idea especially when one is most inclined to do the opposite. Whenever one is absolutely positively certain that one is dealing with a monster, this is an illusion that can almost always be dispelled with patience and courage.
I hope this post doesn’t come across as uppity, pie-in-the-sky or condescending. I certainly have my moments of weakness. I think there is a way out for most of us, most of the time, though, if only we would check our tribal instincts, took more deep breaths, and started conversations seeking social connection rather than rhetorical advantage.
