Finding Love in Disagreement

We are often told to seek love, especially with those with whom we disagree: socially, politically, religiously, and in so many other ways. But do we? Really? Or do we internally ‘agree to disagree’ with no conversation or discussion with people who hold different views. It’s a bit of an easy way out of the situation. Currently, this country is very divided politically, with both sides ranting and raving about the other and what is being done in the ‘name of the people.’ And taking our stand, on whichever side it may rest, screaming and demonstrating against those with whom you disagree is the easy way out. But to go to the words of the prophets, from Jesus to Buddha to Mohammed to any number of others, we need to find common ground. Ways to agree about things. Something. Anything. Because it unites us in seeking the common good for many; not just our own agenda.

What does that mean, though? The Common Good. Capital ‘C’ and capital ‘G.’ Is this an undefined term we need to struggle with, or is it simpler than that? My own inclination is that it’s pretty simple. The ‘Common Good’ is the path, the plan, the thing, that produces the best results for the most people. Yet, truly, we don’t often seek this. We seek our own desires, our own plans, our own thoughts, because they are going to produce the best results for us, and move us forward. And though this blog, and this blog post specifically, are about ‘finding the better way,’ we are all humans, and we seek the easier path, especially when the going gets really tough.

Recently, this has become clear to me. In a job I’m not particularly thrilled to do, but working with the best work team ever, I realized why I am here. Besides the platitudes that pulled me in this direction, I see a higher purpose for me being exactly where I am: to learn. To emphasize. TO. LEARN. Largely about myself. And about my capacity to adapt to a pretty foreign environment and learn what this place, these people, and how they live, is all about so we are able to communicate. By communicate, I mean in a real way, not a perfunctory way in which needs get fulfilled, but in a deeper way in which we learn about each other: how someone ‘different’ communicates, or jokes, or describes things. In life, we have friends who are very much like us, in terms of thought processes, education, interests, and so forth, and we become comfortable with them. While we need this as humans, we also need to constantly seek out the ‘uncomfortable’; that which we do not know in any way, and it makes us uneasy, and we then yearn for the familiar. 

While the ‘familiar’ is good for us in one way, we do not grow from it: we grow from facing and learning to deal with the unfamiliar, the uncomfortable. Unpleasant as it can be sometimes. But when we accept the fact that the current situation is about learning to be more flexible, more versatile, more open, than we thought we could, and we begin to look at the challenge in front of us as a stepping-stone to a higher level of consciousness, a higher level of life, our former ‘challenge’ becomes exhilarating, and we become engaged in a way as never before. What is before us may be mundane on a certain level, but with the knowledge that it is changing us, and changing how we think for the better, each day we face it, we grow stronger, and more open to finding ‘common ground,’ and new ways to communicate with people we would never have had the chance to know before, and to learn things that would have remained forever unknown…