Same and Different
- Oct 10, 2016
- 4 min read
Last night’s presidential debate was a town hall forum, where the in-house audience was a group of voters who have not yet decided which candidate will get their vote. I was shocked that they were able to find that many undecided voters.
To say this election is polarizing is a massive understatement. It seems like everyone I know has Big Feelings about the election. People feel very strongly for one candidate, against another candidate, or against both candidates.
The phrase “divided nation” was used about 7,982 times in the debate last night (please, don't bother fact-checking that statistic. I totally made it up). It is such an accurate phrase. We are divided in so many ways.
When I was little, my sister and I shared a bed. We also fought a lot. One night when our bickering was particularly out of control, my dad came into our room with a roll of Duck Tape. He used the tape to create a line right down the center of our room. That was Katie’s side, this was Lauren’s side. We were not to cross the line, not in the bed, not in the room. My sister and I were so outraged at this lunacy that we immediately welcomed each other onto our sides, resolved whatever we were fighting about, and went to sleep. It was a pretty brilliant parenting strategy.
At a societal level, drawing lines is not creating the same harmonizing effect. We have these bold, sharp lines separating us, pulling us further and further into the us vs. them mentality. We are smart, good, and moral. They are foolish, evil, and bad. We understand things, they do not. We are trying to make our country better, they are actively destroying it.
And this rhetoric isn’t just at play at political levels. It is in our homes, in the way we talk about people who think about and experience the world differently than we do. It’s in how we talk about people of different faiths, backgrounds, races, and political orientations. It’s us and it’s them.
One of the most sacred things about the work I do is that I get to hear people’s stories. People come to my office and share their hurts and fears and dreams and struggles. They tell me about their families and their work, what gets them out of bed in the morning and what keeps them up at night.
And I truly believe that we are more alike than we are different. All of us. Whether you support Trump or Clinton, whether you grew up in this country or somewhere else, whether you worship at a church or synagogue or mosque. We all hope and dream and fear and hurt. We all cry. We worry about the safety of our children. We deeply long to be understood. For the most part, most of the time, we are doing our best.
The great sage Daniel Tiger sings, “In some ways we are different, but in so many ways, we are the same.” He is very right.
It is true that there are ways in which we are different. These differences matter. The differences in our cultures and backgrounds and beliefs are very important. Your story, your hurts, your hopes, your fears matter. They matter deeply. There is great value in understanding the ways that we are different, and how those differences guide the way we care for each other at a personal and cultural level. Understanding these differences is particularly crucial when exploring issues of privilege, power, and systematic oppression.
In so many respects, we are paying attention to these differences in all the wrong ways. It’s like when a husband and wife are so deeply entrenched in the different ways that the communicate and function that they lose sight of the common core values and priorities that originally brought them together. The differences matter, and understanding and valuing the differences is a key part of healing. But so much more important is the ways they are the same, the shared values and experiences and hopes and fears.
We hold onto our differences so fiercely. We think that we need to in order to self-protect, that if we don’t “they will win.” But what if that’s not how it works at all? What if by holding so tightly to our differences, all we do is guarantee that we all lose?
As this election cycle continues, the us versus them mentality is only going to get worse. There will be more division, more opportunities to think of ourselves as “us” and the others as “them.” For the health of our homes and communities and country, I beg you to resist. Look for the similarities, among friends and family members who stand on the other side of key issues. Look for similarities, in neighbors and coworkers and fellow humans who seem so different from you. Remember that we are all coming from a place of fear and hope and uncertainty. We can think and feel and experience differently, but at our core, we are more the same than we are different. Let’s look for the similarities.
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