What We Lose When We Stop Listening

And, what if we can't get it back?

Yesterday was a rough day. The night before, I couldn’t sleep. I was doomscrolling—reading everything I could about the protests going on in Los Angeles, the horrors happening to Palestinians in Gaza, the relentless tragedies that seem to unfold every hour. My phone’s glow became my only companion in the darkness, and I could not make myself look away.

When I finally got out of bed, after awakening from a truly terrifying nightmare, I reached for the phone again– opening it, as I often do, to Facebook. The first thing I read was post from a friend—someone I’ve not known for a long time, but of whom I am genuinely fond. His words were blunt: “If you support LA (referring to the protestors in Los Angeles), I don’t have any use for you as a person.”

I felt the sharp edge of that statement slice through my morning. We clearly don’t see this issue the same way, this friend and I. I see protesting as a right protected by the Constitution. While I don’t agree with property damage or threats of physical violence, I think a government that engages in those practices is far more dangerous than individual bad actors amid mostly peaceful demonstrators. While I don’t know exactly what his viewpoint is, because he didn’t expound, I would imagine that, where I saw peaceful protests, he saw violent rioters breaking the law, threatening law enforcement officers and members of our military. But what stunned me wasn’t that substantive difference—it was the finality of his words. I don’t have any use for you as a person. That’s not just disagreement; that’s a severing.

I started to comment, then thought better of it, hoping instead to address it face-to-face, the way nuanced and complex topics are better handled. I hoped that by the time I saw him later in the summer, I’d know how to be open-hearted, curious, and compassionate in conversation with him, rather than defensive, hurt, or angry. But, I’ll be honest, it knocked the wind out of me a bit.

Later that evening, I learned that a friend I knew mostly through politics—someone I didn’t always agree with—had passed away. It was a tremendous shock. He and I had our occasional differences, but there was always a thread of mutual respect. No matter how much I disagreed with a vote of his, or a position he took, he was unfailingly kind, optimistic, funny. And, he was always doing something in the community: just last month, he’d bought a restaurant–a longtime, hometown favorite and I was eager to go and see his smiling face, proud and happy with his latest venture. Now, he’s gone.

RIP, Doug.

I keep thinking about how short life is. How quickly it slips through our fingers. And how these divides—these sharp, final words we hurl at each other online—are pulling us further and further apart. Surely, we can’t all be as wrong and as bad as we make each other out to be?

I’m grateful the last words I spoke to my friend Doug were ones of care and concern, and not antipathy and anger. After all, I have been guilty of judging, assuming ill intent, and lashing out online– it’s just so easy to do. (Although, less so with Doug, who, again, was hard not to like even if/when one didn’t agree with his positions or actions.)

The real tragedy is that while we’re busy carving each other into “us” and “them,” life is still moving forward. It’s still ending, too, for all of us. We spend these precious moments proving a point, burning bridges, while the clock keeps ticking. As easy as it seems to cast stones and write each other off, I have to believe it’s a waste of our sacred time here together.

I’m not suggesting that we don’t have a moral obligation to stand up for what is right and just. What I am suggesting is that people are not interpreting information the same way (or, even interpreting the same information), and there are forces literally profiting from that dissonance and–even worse–from the resulting discord. We seem powerless to stop it, but it’s painful and is rending the fabric of our society.

I don’t have a neat ending here. Just a series of wishes: that we remember that our only jobs are to love and serve one another; that we find a way to keep talking, even when we disagree; and, that we hold each other close, or at least refuse to shut the door entirely. Because we are all connected, anyway, so shouldn’t we live and breathe together in harmony, rather than enmity?