Be Bridge Builders and Island Dwellers

Be island dwellers: be willing to walk the bridge to the island of common ground. After all, that’s where true understanding has always been found.

I joined Facebook back in 2006 after the pestering of a few friends. Back then the social media platform was more of a place where you send clipart images of peanut butter sandwiches as gifts and posted updates about life events. Over the years, I’ve used my now 16 year-old Facebook account for many different purposes.

I went through that awkward phase where I posted only in third person because the old Facebook prompt asked what’s new by my name rather than the current “What’s on your mind?” And then there were the phases where I thought I could influence world politics single handedly by posting passionate opinions that got a few dozen responses. And then up until fairly recently, I used my account as a forum where I would post genuine, but politically charged, questions and acted as the mediator of the subsequent discussion turned verbal assault.

Through all of this navigation, I’ve come to realize something: most people are completely certain that they have things figured out in the best and proper way. When I attempted to facilitate discussions using those politically charged prompts, battle lines quickly formed and people from both sides would launch their missiles back and forth. It was exhausting work and taught me how to pivot away from feeling hurt by the slander thrown at me to a place of curiosity.

I stuck with the facilitator role probably longer than it was healthy or really desired by my good-hearted friends who were willing to engage in the discussions, but ultimately I moved away from this approach when I realized no one was listening and no one was changing their views at all. They were just using the forum as a platform from which to hurl their barbed points.

You see, I used to have this somewhat naïve belief that if we could just get people from lots of different perspectives, backgrounds, and opinions to sit around a shared table, we could hash out our differences and solve even the most perplexing problems through dialogue. But I know now, one prerequisite for any good to ever come out of dialogue at least three things have to be present: all participants have to 1) be willing to admit that they don’t have everything figured out which requires some serious mature humility, 2) be invested enough to translate their first negative reaction to differing opinions into true curiosity, and 3) be willing to recognize that even though the other people around the table might not see the world exactly the same way they do, the other people are made up out of thousands of slices of life experiences and personality traits, many of which could be quite admirable indeed and that could connect very nicely to what they value and care about.

Sadly, that island of common ground based around those three key principles is shrinking dramatically. Fewer and fewer people are willing to take the bridge from their comfortable base camp to these islands of share value and humility. In fact, the current trend seems to not only refuse to walk the bridge, many prefer to burn the bridge down completed in a sign of their commitment to their chosen point of view “tribe.”

Being an island dweller in this metaphorical sense is not always easy. Goodness knows, there is something so appealing in the comfort of being around people who only reinforce what we already believe to be right. But since known of us really having everything figured out, it’s worth the sacrifice to reach that island of common ground and it’s worth admitting we don’t have all the answers because that’s how true understanding lives too.