There are a lot of people out there.
And most of them are doing something wrong, right this minute. Spend five minutes online and you’ll catch one of them doing something that makes you shake your head in despair, or disbelief, or both.
It’s true no matter what group you’re part of: liberal or conservative, gay or straight or otherwise, Christian or Muslim or Atheist or Jewish or Buddhist or Unitarian Universalist. You can look at one or another group that isn’t yours and find somebody doing something you find incomprehensible. Wrong. Immoral, even.
How can they imagine what they’re doing is right? Clearly, they just need somebody to tell them. To explain in the strongest possible language just how misguided they are. To help them understand the true word of Jesus, or the real meaning of the Constitution, or the iterative nature of the scientific method.
Because who could possibly persist in their wrong behavior when they understand the truth?
Only, how can you ever expect them to hear your message when they’re busy shouting theirs back at you? If they would only shut up for a minute so you could share the truth with them!
It’s a standoff. One in which nobody is likely to lower their verbal weapon. Because it’s much easier to keep shouting louder and louder than to shut your mouth and listen.
We all want to be heard, and none of us wants to hear.
How’s that working for us?
It seems to me it’s not working very well at all. It’s hard to grow as a people, as a culture, when we’re not willing to listen to people who don’t already agree with us. After all, if we’re only repeating what we already know, what’s the point of conversation?
Maybe, just maybe, we can make it better if we’re willing to listen. If we’re willing to allow that truth is really big and somebody else might have a piece of it, just like we do. If we’re willing to do the hard work of trying to understand each other, rather than working so hard to be understood.
It’s a hard way to go. It requires open-mindedness and thought and empathy. It requires us to set aside our egos for a while and have an honest conversation, one in which we are willing to allow ourselves to be persuaded.
It’s terrifying. And it may be the only way to move forward.
How many of us have the courage to try?