This week got me thinking. Is there anyone we wouldn’t sit down with?
Let’s try it another way…
Is there anyone we’d be unwilling to sit down with, have a cup of coffee, wine, you name it? Is there anyone we’d be unwilling to have a conversation with?
Note I speak not of being reluctant, hesitant or even unenthusiastic. There are perhaps several for each of us for whom we’d have to think twice, maybe three times, being especially intentional about any conversation beforehand.
But therein lies the difference.
I wouldn’t have happy-go-lucky, act-like-all-is-well-and-wonderful conversations with all people. Because it’s not.
I wouldn’t refrain from drawing necessary boundaries, as not all conversations are appropriate with all people. Boundaries are healthy and wise.
But I speak of being absolutely unwilling — meaning “I will not… I refuse… I would never do that” — in regard to sitting with and taking the time, doing the work to understand another person. That’s the key.
For years we’ve seen the convenient cry from the keyboard warrior in how disagreement serves as warrantable reason for the expressed unwillingness…
No, we will not agree to disagree. You are wrong. You are wrong in ways that are harming other people. This is not disagreement. This is you being immoral. You are inhumane, heartless and cruel.
Yikes, I admit that some people would be really hard for me to talk to. For some people I’d really have to work at sitting down, being patient and intentional, deciding ahead of time what boundaries need to be drawn and what I’m comfortable and uncomfortable discussing with that person. Some conversations are indeed more laborious, sensitive and difficult than others.
But the minute I say I’m unwilling to sit down with them, the minute I’ve chosen to forgo any actual conversation, is also the moment I’ve chosen to know no more. I cannot sit behind my keyboard (or elsewhere) and pose that I understand another person fully when I make no effort to really get to know them. I cannot suggest that I know why they think or act the way they do.
Allow me a few, brief, blood pressure elevating examples, if you will. If someone thought either of our two most recent presidents were the most wonderful, compassionate and competent president ever, I would want to sit with them and understand the reason they think that way.
Take the immoral argument. If someone, for example, thought abortion should always be allowed at any time under any circumstance or should never be allowed at any time under any circumstance, I would also be curious and want to sit with them. “Help me understand why you think that way,” I would respectfully ponder.
My goal is to understand what I don’t — not to cast judgment on those with whom I disagree.
This idea that we won’t sit with another because we disagree is sad to me. Absolutely, once more, it is indeed completely healthy and wise to limit the extent of our interactions and instill those boundaries with certain people, as many have ways of articulation and expression that are difficult to be around; that’s not what we’re speaking of today.
We’re speaking instead of the humanity argument. If I judge you to be immoral because of the opinion you hold and utilize such to justify an unwillingness to speak or interact no more, I have just cut off my most effective means of knowing more than I already do.
And if I choose to know no more than I already to, then that makes me sad for me.
Respectfully…
AR