Let’s Unite, Not Divide

Audio By Carbonatix

You’ve noticed how divisive things have seemed for the past number of years, right? Where we used to have friendly rivalries (emphasis on friendly!) about the sports team we support or about whose alma mater is the best, our society has made an unfortunate shift. And now, it feels like the vast majority of the things that make us different from one another are no longer in the “friendly” disagreement category.

Instead, the stakes have been raised and our choices, our beliefs, our preferences, our histories, and the brands we tend to buy now all seem like they’re just fodder in the never-ending war over who and what is “right.” And I put “right” in quotation marks on purpose. Because while I do believe that morality has a divine origin and that some things are not debatable as to whether they are right or wrong, we live in a time where many, many things that reasonable people can (and maybe should) have different opinions on are treated by different groups like there is an absolutely true and right way to view things.

And here’s what I’d like to invite all of us to: Let’s dial that intensity down. Let’s remember that we don’t have to agree with people about everything in order to love them and be in meaningful relationships with them. Let’s work to prioritize our human connections over our personal stances.

I know this won’t be easy, especially because it’s so common for people to toss in little snide comments in support of whatever their ideological hot issue is at the moment. But let’s all work to avoid getting hung up on those parts of the conversation and instead turn things back toward talking about the common, shared values that we have. That might mean we talk about the relative we both love and want to see grow and thrive. It might mean we talk about the faith that we have in common. It might mean we talk about how things are going at our shared workplace. Do you see what I’m getting at here? I want to encourage all of us to remember that even while there are some things that we won’t agree on, we do have big, important things in common with the people around us. And focusing on the things that unite us rather than focusing on the things that divide us is a way that we can prioritize the relationship over winning a debate. Or maybe the better wording would be having the debate, because these conversations rarely lead to anybody winning on any level.

Let’s work to be people who view people and relationships as the top priority and spend less time worrying about trying to make sure everybody else thinks and acts exactly like us. When we do that, we’ll be winning more often at home…and everywhere else we go!