This week I exchanged a few emails with a friend who lives in Warren. We don’t see each other that often but I still consider her a friend. We have a shared history that is personal and professional. We love and have loved some of the same people.
We don’t agree on national politics, specifically the current occupant of the White House and I don’t disrespect her because of it.
She lives in my community, and I know her through multiple different contexts. We share a love of a particular brand of leather handbags.
I don’t need to agree with her on national politics to discuss skinning tomatoes or making marinara. I don’t need to bring her around to my point of view on Trump or his henchmen. I can disagree with her and not just be civil, but engage, care, and get along with her because we have more in common than we don’t.
I recently interacted with some other local folks with whom I had disagreed on how a local issue should be interpreted. I thought they were wrong and after stewing about it for a while, decided it didn’t matter. Whether they were wrong or right, I could give them the grace to be wrong and I could also acknowledge that I might be wrong. I did not agree with the resolution of this issue, but it didn’t seem worth firebombing my interactions with these folks. They took a stance that was different to mine on something. That is their right.
It's too easy in this heated up political climate to get all hot about something that may not warrant an escalation. We can disagree with each other. We are allowed to read/assess things based on our experience/our preferences and our belief sets and our decisions. Our beliefs and those of our neighbors may not align with each other 100%. That is okay.
If we have to draw a line in the sand, an us-vs-them metric for every single thing then we will have nothing left for when it’s important to draw a line in the sand. It’s okay to disagree and still get along with each other.
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