I’ve always been interested in politics. I suppose that shouldn’t surprise those who know me. Once in college, one of my good friends told me I was the most closed minded person she knew. That kinda rocked me because I thought I was open minded, albeit opinionated.
Since then I’ve worked at being more open minded. But anymore it feels as though people pride themselves in being closed minded.
Many may not even recognize it, but they refuse to even engage in conversations with those who don’t think identically to them, and when they do engage with others it’s full on attack mode and very full of hate.
I’ve taken the bait more times than I’d like to admit, and I’ve called out people for it, too.
So, I’m not here to preach anything to anyone. I’m just here because I’ve seen the unfortunate side of political discourse, and I’ve reflected on it. This is what I think.
We need to be more open minded. Now, I’m not saying that we should all go changing our minds on everything. There are things that I’ve changed my mind on either partially or fully, just as there are things that no one can ever change my mind on.
But are we willing to have conversations with people to at least understand where they’re coming from and why they land where they do on different issues?
I saw someone post how they’re going to keep posting all of their opinions because hopefully it help someone change their minds. But this same person isn’t interested in listening to anyone else let alone changing their own mind. So why expect that from others? Is that fair? To me, that’s choosing politics over people, and our nation isn’t going to get any better until we stop it.
Now, read this next part with care and understand that I’m not saying what my political beliefs are. I’m trying to make a point.
I read an article last night, which said that one side of our political leaders are going to try to distract the other side and not work together, while the other side has said they hope for bipartisanship. So basically one side isn’t choosing to put the American people first. They refuse to work together out of spite. They’re choosing hate and politics over the best interest of the American people they’ve been elected to represent. And they are proud of it. This makes zero sense to me for anyone who loves this nation to do. I feels more like hate than love. And perhaps I’m missing something, but I’m willing to hear out someone with a different view.
Why are we so afraid to listen to others? Why do we just want to silence them? If we believe that we are right then we should have no fear of being honest and having open dialogue.
When we choose politics over people we are missing out on so much. We miss out on the human connections, which make the world a better place. We’re not going to see each other as fellow human beings if we automatically shut them out and label them in some horrible way without even listening – I mean really listening to them.
We can bring back civility, but it will take a bipartisan effort on the government’s part, and even if they fail at that we can bring it back by not letting our political leaders set the standard for how we communicate and treat our neighbors both near and far.
Let’s choose people over politics.
I'm Not Martha 