“AR, I respectfully love you and respectfully disagree with you.”
The above was the initial response to one of my recent posts…
I love it!
I love that love and respect didn’t equate to automatic agreement. Just because we love and respect someone doesn’t mean we have to agree with everything they think, say, and do.
I love that love and respect didn’t negate all disagreement. Just because we love and respect someone doesn’t mean we aren’t able to disagree. We are each uniquely and wonderfully made. We have different gifts, different experiences, and different perspectives.
I love that love and respect can exist in absence of consensus. We do not need consensus in order to love and respect. In fact, often times, it is our lack of consensus that sharpens us… that encourages us to think deeply… that aids us in crafting effective solution.
And yet, so many of our leaders, so many of the elect, so many of the intelligent — and so many of us — have confused this issue. Note the deterioration of our dialogue…
We start with the words of my insightful, reverent dissenter: “I respectfully love you and respectfully disagree with you.” [emphasis mine]
Sensing disagreement, respect is often the first thing each of us — and our leaders — justify omitting. I have also received these exact words: “I love you and disagree with you.” (Note: no stated respect.)
We then digress until the full focus is solely on the squabble. There is no love nor respect stated. We only hear: “I disagree with you.” The reason we hear no love and respect in that last statement is because there is none.
Listen to our leaders these days. Listen to the elect. Listen to the litany of pronounced justification for going it alone… for executive action… for not listening to the other side of the aisle or to dissenting opinion. Do you hear any love and respect? Do you hear comments such as, “We had a healthy exchange, actively listening to one another, deliberately working to comprehend where each of us is coming from, and then discerning how we can together develop effective, long term solution.” Within such a response, there is a focus on listening… comprehending… and thus on solution. Do we hear that from our leaders?
Or instead — and typically only after huddling with the likeminded — too often behind closed doors and carefully crafted photo ops — do they instead focus on the disagreement?
Do they remove everything from the response above — except for the part that pronounces that they disagree?
Some will come running to our colloquial rescue, encouraging the contemporary adage that we should “agree to disagree.” While I do believe there is as aspect of the adage that’s healthy, there’s also a part that’s lacking. Too often “to agree to disagree” still omits love and respect.
Respectfully… always…
AR
Still one of my favorites: “Love is the answer…never mind the question.”