WHY EVERYONE DOESN’T AGREE WITH ME

While I am serving as Priest-in-Charge in Kittanning, I spend two nights a week at the Quality Inn. It’s no 4-Star motel by any means, but it is fine for me: decent breakfast, small exercise room where I can spend some time on the elliptical to burn some calories, good bed. Nothing fancy. Many of the men working the gas fields stay there as well. But since they work twelve-hour shifts, I usually see them coming or going. No conversations but only a nod of recognition or a “good morning”.

The only person I have any semblance of a conversation with is the manager, Michael, who works the day shift, seven-to-three.  But we don’t talk much anymore, not in depth anyway. Michael has FOX news on all the time, which drives a liberal like me up the wall. A while back I said something about how I had lost all respect for the Republican Party back in 2008 when they nominated a totally unprepared person (in my humble opinion) to be Vice-President. His first response was, “Look what we got” (meaning President Obama) and then, “Let’s not talk politics.” We no longer do.

Nevertheless, I still wonder why Michael can’t see what I see, why he doesn’t agree with me about politics. To me what I see is perfectly clear and obvious. Can’t he see that? Of course, on the other hand, internally he is probably asking me those same questions. We both look at the same situation and see things almost the polar opposite. I wonder how this can be. Why can two people see the same thing and yet not agree on what they are seeing or certainly, when I am one of those two, not see what I see?

The world would be so much better, again in my humble opinion, if everyone saw what I see. There would be less fights, if any, no disagreements. Life would be pleasant and we could get on with solving the world’s problems because we would all be on the same page. What a wonderful would that would be!

 

But that would be a fairytale world simply because no two people have the same experiences. And it is those life experiences that color how we view the world and thus what we believe and how we should act. Michael obviously believes what he believes to be true based on his experiences: single, Navy veteran, under VA care because of an injury suffered when he was on active duty: his list is long. I would find myself nowhere on that list just as he would find himself nowhere on my list.

It is that list of personal experiences that make each of us so different and why we can find ourselves in total disagreement about the same issue. I know that. We all know that. We also know that, when we are open to hear what another has experienced and why that person sees what he sees, we can at least agree to disagree in peace. Unfortunately, tragically, as the mess in the Middle East exemplifies, that does not always happen. Fortunately for Michael and me, agreeing to not talk politics makes our conversations peaceful if not, at times, inane. But I still wish he would agree with me politically.