Please forgive my late response to the events of last evening.  When something of this magnitude happens, it takes a while for me to process and my thoughts go many different directions until the “trigger”.  Someone says or does something or I read something and everything suddenly comes to focus.  Please don’t limit this focus to one silo or another because like most major events, I believe it’s much more complicated than that.  I believe it’s the expectation of every human being that every other human being should think and behave the way they do because… we’re all humans.

But no, you say.  Human beings are unique creatures, no two humans have the same voice or fingerprints.  We encourage people to be their unique selves, to not body shame, to dress the way that makes them feel special, to celebrate their gender and sexuality, to worship as they please, to live as they want.  Until it’s something we don’t agree with. That’s when we put them in a silo and make it an “us vs them” situation.  

As humans, it’s natural for us to make comparisons.  We teach our children to look at opposites – loud/soft, high/low. We ask them to sing their favorite things.  Vanilla vs chocolate mint.  You like chocolate mint?  Me too!  We have something in common!  If someone likes vanilla, there’s obviously something wrong with them, my new friend and I joke.  A harmless comparison and camaraderie we’ve all experienced.  Blue vs purple, round vs square.  It’s all in fun. 

As we mature, the comparisons increase.  Black vs white, gay vs straight, rich vs poor, northern vs southern, Christian vs Muslim, democrat vs republican.  Like we’ve been taught, we look at opposites, and put things into categories.  I think of Sesame Street – “one of these things is not like the other”.  And just like we were as kids, we relate to the people who like what we like and believe as we believe.  It’s comfortable and doesn’t stretch us much.  But most of us don’t resort to violence.  We just choose to hang with people who are most like we are.

Where the problem lies is when as children, you like vanilla and I like chocolate mint and I tell you that you’re stupid because you like vanilla.  Have you ever worked with children?  Something like this usually results in a shouting match with leads to crying or anger, which, if not checked can turn to punching and kicking.  But we outgrow this, right?  I did say at the beginning that humans are – well – human.  We like to think that we outgrow this behavior or have strategies to deal with our perhaps inappropriate feelings.  We can walk away from how someone’s judgement makes us feel or agree to disagree with them.  That would be way too simple.

So much depends on our lived experiences and therefore, our perceptions.  Remember, perception is reality. And for those who perhaps didn’t grow up in the same circumstances you did, sadness and anger are real.  It doesn’t take much to set something off.  Ever been abused? It changes the way you think and how you react. We know we’re unique human beings with unique life experiences, and yet we STILL expect people to just think and react the way we think and act.

As you’ve read this, you’ve probably already placed me within a silo.  You’ve taken a complicated human being, made comparisons, and made an instant judgement as to where my alliances lie.  But you’ve never thought to ask me WHY I believe these things.  You’ve never asked about my upbringing, my parents, my life experiences, my hardships and my sorrows.  You don’t know what scares me, what my insecurities are or what I’m proud of.  You don’t know how I’ve struggled to change the person I could have been into the person I want to be.  Because change is a process, it is change of habit, it is growth.  I am not the person I was 10, 20, 30, 40 years ago.  Part of it is the people I’ve chosen to surround myself with, part is choosing to not follow the path my early life set me up to travel.  I’m fortunate.  Not everyone is.

There are so many who are under the false assumption that if the year would just change numbers, if the right person was in office, if you reacted the way I expected you to on social media, if you responded the way I would respond, that everything would get better and yet we have still not asked WHY.  We will not begin to heal as a family, as a community, as a state, as a nation until we have difficult conversations with people who think and behave and live differently from us and genuinely ask them WHY they think and behave the way they do and try to understand rather than tell them they’re wrong.  We also have to look at ourselves and figure out WHY we feel the way we do about people who think and behave differently.  It’s called building relationships.

So as I think about the events of last night, I’m not trying to get all kum bah ya on you and have you believe that if we would just begin some hard conversations without judgement, the world would immediately be a better place.  That would be too simplistic.  It takes a long time to build  trust with people when they’ve been told they’re stupid or too sensitive because they like vanilla and not chocolate mint or vice versa.  Told over and over and over again, only to dig in their heels, never wanting to have dialogue with you. I don’t care what side you’re on.  Just please be you. And I’ll be me. And let’s get back to being proud of who we are as a united nation, not a divided one.