Listen to the experiences, if not the facts

Here's what it's going to come down to: people will need to convince their fellows.  Co-workers will need to talk each other about their different experiences on their commutes.  Neighbors will need to decide how they act toward one another, whether or not they wave as they are out walking their dogs. Extended families will have to decide if they are excited about the new baby in the family, whose parents are the gay couple.  It will have to be about small things, not larger political issues like abortion, funding weapons programs or the economy.  It will have to be about whether or not the Sandy Hook school shooting actually happened, if you saw swastikas and racial slurs on someone's house.  The things we never thought we'd have to try to convince each other of.  

It's not a national conversation about reconciliation.  It's millions of individual conversations between people who form a network, who stand together, who exchange.  It's not a one-time vote; it's an everyday attitude.  It's not a lofty idealism of being at peace with yourself. It's not being complacent, asking someone, "You really believe that?" about a myriad of headlines, quotes, accusations.  Fact-checking has been dismissed.  There's no point; Fact and Truth are now considered mutable words.  We can work to come back to facts and we should uphold the sources we know are factual.  But to make an immediate difference, we need to find another way.

We now find ourselves having conversations about factual statements the same we have uneducated conversations about drug interactions.  Today, I took an ibuprofen for a headache; my co-worker says actually what I need is aspirin. 

"Ibuprofen is an anti-inflammatory," she tells me.   She's probably right, it's not what I need for my headache.  

"Can I take an aspirin right after taking ibuprofen?" I ask her.  

"Sure."

So I do. Even though I have this vague recollection of staggering different kinds of medicine from a previous experience after surgery, I don't call my doctor's office. I ask the woman without the medical degree who is handing me a remedy, completely comfortable with the conflicting knowledge that the drug is both powerful enough to cure my headache and also not worth my time to double check its possible side effects on my health. 

And this is the model for the kinds of interaction we are having now.  You don't believe in climate change?  "Ehhhh, I'm not a scientific person," said one woman on an NPR interview.  And right there, she popped the pills.  No amount of citation, no link to a scientific study is going to convince her. She simply doesn't care if it's true because there's a remedy for her headache, her fill-in-the-blank other problem that's not climate change.  Her concern is more immediate and she's not interested in the grand scheme of things and how climate change actually impacts a multitude of economic factors that may actually impact her immediate source of suffering, blah blah blah.  She doesn't care about the side effects.  

The majority of people who have been asked why they voted for the president-elect stated 1 of 2 things: 

1. his opinion on one issue matched theirs so they aligned themselves on this one issue while neglecting all the others, (like his stance on repealing the ACA but completely ignoring that white supremacists embrace him).

2. or they express an obtuse overall feeling like wanting change while also not being interested in how it happens, ("drain the swamp" without caring about the details).

The conversation is no longer that some people believe the holocaust never happened.  Now it's that a radio personality without credentials states Sandy Hook never happened.  (This is untrue.)  This man has no basis for it, but will spout it, and people will believe it. Something recent, on our soil, also with survivors' accounts and eye witnesses, now completely held in question.

So it's going to have to be each individual having human contact, sharing their stories that will make a difference.  One to one.  ​Our stories are where we start to understand. They by their very nature give 1 person a platform for expression while also engage an active listener.  Stories break down barriers.  Stories are also not subject to facts, but are our own words and have their own merit. If we're not dealing facts anymore, then let's deal in personal experience. Stories don't need to be universally true because there are 2 sides to every story.  And this is the pivotal point that will break open the fact vs. fake news frustration.  It's hard to refute eye witness accounts and personal stories about how people were affected by Sandy Hook.  

Why are people upset?  What prompted their vote to be swayed one way or the other?  Let them tell you their story--not their rhetoric, not their opinion, not their stance.  Their story.  

Growing Into

You'll Grow Out Of It, by Jessie Klein.  If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it.  It's about a young woman who has pretty much been a tomboy all her life and then, as all girls are, is suddenly expected to be interested in and know how to use make up, to think lingerie is a fabulous idea.  But she bucks the late bloomer stereotype and her coming of age essays are hilarious.  And underlying it all is this idea that there is a self, deemed childish, that you grow out of, that you shirk off for more adult and antiquated ways.  There is a mold that we all naturally grow into. And if you don't firm up when the others do, don't worry, you'll grow out of it.  Her example of not fitting the mold but also not settling for an outcome she doesn't want is apt.  No woman is defined by lip gloss.  You don't need to grow out of anything.

I felt a bit like that girl when trying to find a place for my family on Sunday mornings.  We don't fit into a traditional gathering.  We have some pretty radical ideas for people from West Michigan.  I have been told I would grow out of those notions.  But--and it's happened to me a couple times now--I'm one of the younger people in my crowd.  Look around you at the people who govern, who volunteer, who share their tremendous talent.  Those whose radical act may be to just come and sit each Sunday, to be present, and presente.  These are my examples. These people have not grown out of it.  I, am not growing out of, but into.

Recently we have seen some tremendously upsetting things.  We have been told we'll have to get used to it. That people are sick of these ideas.  To me that sounds a lot like you'll grow out of it.  Well, I know how that turned out.   I found people who have been not getting used to it for a lot longer than I have.  Who show me how to make what's in my heart shine brighter.  How I shouldn't give up on that, shouldn't and shouldn't have to get used to it  And I thank you for that. It has given me tremendous hope of late.  So let me give you some: take heart.  I promise you, I will not grow out of this.