Raise Your Hand If You Don’t Agree With Everyone! Read If You’ve Ever Disagreed With Someone…
Remember where you were, New Year’s Eve 2019?? “Cheers to 2020! A Year of VISION!” So many people I knew had a rough 2019 and were ready to have a fresh start. If only we knew then what we know now! To say this year has been hard is an understatement. Even for those who have done well during the pandemic, there have been many aspects of our lives that are still harder than they should be.
On top of all of the difficulties this year has brought, for me it’s been the strained relationships of people that I disagree with that has been the most discouraging!
I just had a text exchange with my parents about politics, an area where we completely disagree right now. This is the last message I left:
“This certainly doesn't feel like the UNITED states anymore. Both sides are viewed as enemies and the whole point of a democracy is that all voices are supposed to come together and figure this all out. If each side is an enemy, then we're doomed and our real enemies have won. And all of this makes me sad. America doesn't feel very ‘great’ to me.”
I know so many of us have similar experiences: close friends and family with very different views about politics, masks, conspiracy theories, schools, guns, climate change, wildfires, cats and dogs… For what it’s worth, cats drool and dogs rule! (TOTALLY kidding! Please don’t email me! I like cats too... most of the time 😝)
So, it’s often just a simple message, but if you’re like me right now, sometimes that SIMPLE message sends me into such a heightened emotional state! Because things are so hard right now, it feels like the smallest little thing can put me into a charged fight or flight response. For me, it takes so much energy to NOT elevate the conversation to a “hold my beer, where are my fighting gloves” moment.
So why do our minds go here so quickly? And what can we do about it? The TRUTH is that we have so much more in common than we have in difference. Can we ground ourselves in small, presence practices that can bring calm to these kinds of disagreements? Cause it’s not IF they’ll happen, but WHEN. And when they do, how can we be prepared?
I can’t wait to get to the other side, but know that I DO have hope that we’ll one day be able to enter that THIRD place again - the grey, messy middle. And it’ll be a beautiful place.
