What a week it’s been. The images that came out of the incident at the Capitol on Wednesday were surreal. I’m not sure I can even describe the range of emotions I went through that afternoon. I almost burst into tears on my way home that day because I kept hearing snippets of what was happening but it was a really busy day for me at work, so I was trying to get things done while at the same time wondering if I would even be returning to work on Thursday or if our country might be spiraling out of control.
I honestly didn’t know what to do. I still don’t. My heart is so heavy, and it has been for a while. I’m not sure I see a clear way forward. We are SO divided. I’ve been trying for months (probably years, honestly) to determine how I can help foster communication and understanding between the two sides. To be clear, I understand that there are way more than two “sides” but, the way our government is set up, I think we have to work within the system first to make the changes that would allow more than two parties to have a legitimate shot at positions like the presidency.
So, I’ve been agonizing over this for a long time, trying to figure out how I can be a bridge, and the best idea I’ve come up with so far is to develop some sort of tool I can use to find out what people around me believe and value. I’m working on a series of questions that I can distribute to identify where people’s values might overlap. I’m clearly not a psychologist, and this isn’t an official survey in any way, I just want to do some informal research to see where people are in this country. Because if we know what our neighbors/friends/family members value, I think we can start to find areas where we can work together. Two of the most important things I’ve learned about people in my almost forty years are:
1. People don’t change unless they want to, and
2. If you’re going to have any hope of convincing people they want to change, you have to first meet them where they are.
But we all might need to change, at least a little. Of course it’s easy to blame and shame, but blame and shame never changed anybody’s mind, and I don’t think there’s any way we’ll be able to come together if we don’t find some common ground and stop demonizing those who don’t believe the same way we do. That’s probably going to mean having some difficult, uncomfortable conversations, but I truly believe that the only way we can avoid a complete breakdown of our democracy is to face our discomfort and work together to have a more united United States.
With that said, this survey probably isn’t going to be for people who support what happened at the Capitol on Wednesday, because if you believe that was okay, I don’t think any part of you is interested in finding a way to get along. But I honestly don’t believe that I know very many people who think that storming government buildings is a valid reaction to…well, anything. And if you do think that attack was warranted in any way, I ask that you take a few steps back and really think about what that means.
I already have a pretty good start to developing my survey/tool, but I’m not quite ready to share it yet, so if any of my readers have ideas of questions they think would be helpful in finding common ground, please let me know. Otherwise, I plan to have at least a version of it ready to go by next week, because I’m eager to get started. Because despite everything that’s happened, I still believe that most people are mostly good. And I have hope that we can all be better.
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