Kindness in a Divided Nation

One of the hardest things I have ever had to do was to learn how to co-parent a child as a divorced person. After the divorce, it was a priority for both my ex-wife and I to put our son first. That was the good news. The bad news was that we had very different ideas of how to raise him, very different ideas about what our son needed, very different ideas of what was best for him. I thought that he should learn X. She thought he needed Y. I felt that that Y would prevent X. She thought that X would inhibit him receiving Y. And so on.

Truth be told, we did not need to be divorced to have the same conflict regarding parenting, but the fact that we were divorced intensified the feelings that I was against her, and she was against me. There were bitter disagreements. There was anger and resentment. Why wouldn’t I see that Y was important? Didn’t she value X at all? In all the anger and the resentment, we each forgot that the other loved our son very much, and that both of us desperately wanted that which was best for him.

It wasn’t until we decided to make ourselves give the other the benefit of the doubt that we could begin to work together again. We decided that we would remember that which was first: we both loved our son and we both wanted the very best for him. We might never agree on whether to prioritize X or Y, but we would agree that my support of X came from a position that I believed X was important to our son maximizing his potential. Likewise, her support of Y came from that same goal. Even if one disagreed about whether the priority should be X or Y, we could both agree that that the goal was to make the best environment for him. And once we could recognize our common purpose, we could begin to respect the other’s position even if we did not agree. It was only then that we could see that both X and Y were valuable to our son, that it need not be either an X or Y, that it could be both if we worked together.

An election is a lot like a divorce, this past one more than most. People in this country are divided against each other, often divided in the same state, sometimes divided in the same church, occasionally divided in the same household.

There are plenty of people who believe that X should be the priority for the country. Others prioritize Y. Each chose candidates accordingly.

What we must do is remember that while we disagree about what should be the priority, all of us love this country, all of us want a better America. We must give each other the benefit of the doubt and recognize our common purpose. And recognizing our common purpose, we must respect each other’s position. If we can do that little bit, perhaps we can work together. There will still be issues on which we disagree. We will never see everything the same. But we can disagree respectfully while continuing to work to our common purpose.