Four adults. A broken dryer. And a discussion about politics that did not end in disaster. All on a cool, clear September evening outside a dance studio in an American suburb.
(I was searching for a particular image--one I had found a week ago--involving revolutionaries discussing politics in a tavern setting, when I came across this image. It's definitely apropos of something, just what I don't know...)
I have learned over the years whenever a person speaks emotionally I need to listen carefully. In addition, I have discovered that when a person speaks and I become angry, frustrated, or resentful, I need to listen with even greater care. This has been the reason why I have not given up on humanity, despite my time spent in the sewers of the Internet we call social media. It is through the art of listening that I hope to change the world. Or at least my tiny corner of it.
On a Tuesday night in mid September, fifty days before the Presidential election, four adults congregated in a parking lot. They were waiting for their children to finish dance class. The topic of conversation was a broken dryer, belonging to one of the fathers, who was frustrated with the horrible customer service at the repair company. A few weeks without a dryer will make anyone angry. Spending that time constantly grappling with an unresponsive service provider, well, that would would fill the most patient person with rage.
And with that rage boiling through the veins of the dryer discussion, the conversation shifted to politics.
That was when I began to listen carefully, while my mind began to analyze what unfolded.
It began with the man who had a broken dryer. He started listing what was wrong with the world. He was angry and exhausted with the state of things--the other three were also frustrated with all things political. While he spoke the most, the rest, which included me, interjected our opinions or experiences when we felt like it. Some times is was to challenge and assert; other times it was to affirm. Although I commented twice, once on the Speaker of the House, and another on the media, I spent a good portion of the conversation listening to everyone. Including the most silent of the group (he spoke up once during the political portion of that night’s discussion, with a type of comment I did not expect from him).
We touched on a range of current issues: policing and rioting; the mainstream media and its alternatives; the President vs. the Speaker of the House; single moms and bootstraps; voting rights and responsibilities. Oh, and the lack of exciting choices among the candidates. Nothing was given over to any form of in-depth debate. It was like dancing, but the amateur kind: light, frantic, and without rhythm. But nor was there shouting and mudslinging, despite each one of us coming from different political perspectives.
And it abruptly ended with the arrival of the next generation, when they finished their own dance lessons.
Four adults somehow survived a minor battle in the great civil war that is unfolding in this country. The war that paid pundits on television go on about, and that the average person parrots in their comments on social media. That ideologues blame on polar value systems clashing. And that foreign and domestic players exploit for their nefarious agendas. A war I have grown weary of watching, and wary of analyzing. And one that I am walking away from because I no longer believe in it.
Because I have stood and listened to a person whom I am told is my enemy, and it turns out he is human just like me. He is no less rational, reasonable, or logical than me, despite holding differing opinions. He is just as emotional as I am when struggling with forces outside our control. And he is just as honest as I have been with myself, when he admits he does not have a solution to any of these problems.
But I have not given up hope. Watching that conversation shift from a broken dryer to a broken society, has inspired me to focus that much more on my desire to change the world.
Now I understand where I have to begin...
(To be continued...)
(As for the four adults? I am sure we will all meet up again some day in the near future. Except, at that future moment, we will be talking about the new dryer that was bought, four days later. Or about the fact that I blogged about our previous engagement.)
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