As told to The Humane Herald
I rehearse conversations now. Not important ones. Ordinary ones.
Before I say something around certain people, I run it through my head first. Is this political? Could it become political? Is there a word in here that’s going to set somebody off? Do I know enough about what this person believes to know whether saying what I actually think is worth it?
I don’t remember always doing that.
I remember disagreeing with people. I remember arguments at dinner tables, rolling my eyes at relatives, and having friends who believed things I thought were ridiculous. But I don’t remember every disagreement feeling like a referendum on whether someone was a good person.
Now it does.
Sometimes it feels like there are no neutral subjects anymore. Where you shop, what you eat, what you drive, what you watch, where you live—somehow all of it can become a declaration. Even the words we use can identify us before we’ve actually said what we believe.
Once someone thinks they know which “side” you’re on, the conversation changes.
That’s what scares me about where we are as a country. We aren’t just disagreeing about what America should do anymore. Sometimes it feels like we’re disagreeing about who counts as a decent American in the first place.
There are people I love who don’t know what I think about certain things. Not because I’m ashamed, but because I don’t know what telling them would cost.
Maybe nothing. Maybe we’d disagree and move on. Or maybe they’d look at me differently afterward. Maybe everything else I believe would suddenly be filtered through that one disagreement.
And if I’m being fair, I know I’ve done some version of that too.
I’ve heard one opinion and made assumptions about the ten opinions that must come with it. I’ve seen a bumper sticker, a flag, a social media post, or even a few particular words and thought I already knew who I was dealing with.
Maybe sometimes I’m right.
That’s almost worse, because it makes it easier to assume I’m always right.
I don’t think I’m the only person doing this calculation. I think there are a lot of conversations happening in people’s heads that never make it out of their mouths.
We’re living through a time when elections can change relationships. Families avoid certain subjects at holidays. Friends learn things about each other that suddenly make years of friendship feel different. Strangers can decide what kind of person you are before you’ve had an actual conversation.
Somewhere along the way, politics stopped being only something we argued about and became something we use to identify one another.
And I understand why some conversations feel impossible.
There are real things happening in this country that affect people’s lives. People are afraid for their rights, their families, their safety, their livelihoods, and the future they thought they understood. Some people feel hated for who they are. Others feel hated for what people assume they believe. Sometimes the hostility is obvious. Sometimes the person causing it doesn’t even recognize it as hostility.
That’s part of what makes this so difficult.
I don’t think all beliefs are equally harmless, and I don’t think every disagreement deserves to be brushed aside in the name of getting along. Sometimes what someone believes really does hurt another person. Sometimes anger is justified. Sometimes a line has to be drawn.
But somewhere between justified anger and complete separation, we still have a country to live in.
I don’t know how you fix a country that has forgotten how to talk to itself.
I don’t know how we govern together when millions of us aren’t merely disagreeing, but experiencing completely different versions of America. We don’t agree on who is being harmed, who is doing the harming, what is true, or sometimes even what just happened.
And none of us is particularly good at seeing ourselves through somebody else’s eyes.
That’s the part I keep coming back to.
What if something I think is harmless doesn’t feel harmless to the person sitting across from me? What if something they say casually carries a weight they don’t understand for me? What if we’re both entering the conversation prepared to defend ourselves before either of us has actually spoken?
I don’t know what to do with that.
Lately, I catch myself saying less. I change subjects. I type something and delete it. Sometimes I decide it’s easier not to know what someone thinks because I’m afraid knowing might change how I feel about them.
But silence doesn’t make the division disappear. It just makes it quieter.
A country this large was never going to agree on everything. We still have to live here together.
We pass each other in grocery stores. Our children sit beside each other in classrooms. We work together, share neighborhoods, care for aging parents, complain about bills, celebrate birthdays, and grieve people we love.
None of that erases the things that divide us.
It just means the people on the other side of those divisions are still people.
I don’t need to pretend someone’s words can’t hurt me in order to listen to them. I don’t need to abandon what I believe to wonder why someone believes something different. And listening doesn’t mean I’m obligated to agree.
Maybe sometimes the conversation ends with us farther apart.
But at least we had it.
I don’t know what I expect one conversation to change. Maybe nothing.
But I know what happens if we stop having them altogether.
I want to stop rehearsing.
I want to talk to people again.
And more than anything, I want us to remember how.
— Anonymous
The Humane Herald 