It’s true. . .
You may never get an Answer
if you don’t ask a Question
but it’s just as true
that sometimes the best Answers
require no Questions. . .
Who Cares - What Matters
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DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU’D LIKE TO BE DONE UNTO YOU. . .RIGHT
Or better,
DO UNTO OTHERS AS THEY REALLY WANT DONE UNTO THEM. . .
I mean these are really great aspirations for yourself
FOR OTHERS
. . .or are they the worst?
it’s real close to liking you to break open the
Butterfly Cocoon
before it’s ready
. . .seemingly to make it easier
But actually doing it the most harm ever. . .
THE SAVIOR COMPLEX
I’ve always had one
and thought it noble
and even sometimes wore it as a
Badge of Honor
until I saw I was actually doing more harm
than any kind of well intended
G O O D
so when an article about SAVIOR COMPLEXING comes across my attention
I SOAK IT UP
and ok, fine, here’s the truest of true Confessions:
I end up making this Complex even more
C O M P L E X I N G
and yet, I read on and invite you to do the same now with this article from a recent Psychology Today by Mark Travers, Ph.D., an American psychologist with degrees from Cornell University and the University of Colorado Boulder.
Everyone. . .
Dr. Travers shares that many people come to therapy troubled by their inability to help someone in need. They may say things like:
If you relate to any of these questions, you may have a savior complex. At first glance, your behaviors might point to your helpful nature. But, when examined more closely, your savior complex can be psychologically unhealthy as it can give you an external outlet to focus on instead of addressing your own problems.
Helpfulness is a valued and pro-social trait, but there is a difference between helping and saving. A savior complex goes beyond our ability to help people, crossing into the realm of trying to be a hero in someone else’s life for your benefit more than theirs.
Here I’ll talk about three ways you can manage your instinct to want to “save” people.
When people confide in you, they are often looking for an outlet to let out pent-up emotions instead of wanting to “be fixed.” A big problem for many “saviors” is the mistaken assumption that people are incapable of solving their own issues. If you take up the practice of listening more actively, you may learn that this person is perhaps just looking for a supportive shoulder and someone who will listen.
A study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology finds that listening carefully and attentively increases the level of humility in any conversation, resulting in a positive feedback loop of increased humility and better listening.
Here are two ways to up your listening skills, according to the researchers:
Aside from practicing active listening, resist your urge to intervene. You may find that people can often come to their own aid when helping themselves is the only real way out.
If you try to be the fixer of all their problems, you run the risk of unintentionally pushing them towards a sense of learned helplessness, where they lose the perspective to be able to diagnose and address their own issues.
When a loved one comes to you with an issue, refrain from offering assistance or suggestions right off the bat. Remind yourself that you can be present for someone without having to rescue them. Instead, you can offer validation that shows that you understand and empathize with them and are there for them whenever they need to vent.
One key aspect of the savior complex is the ingrained desire to help even when it’s not wanted or requested. Assuming that the other person is incapable of helping themselves may reflect or be perceived as a superiority complex on your end.
Instead, you can offer assistance in low-pressure ways that keeps the ball in their court. For instance, ask the other person questions like, “This situation seems quite tough. Is there any way I can help?”
Follow their guidance if they ask you to help in a certain way instead of assuming that you know what’s best.
Managing your savior instincts may seem difficult at first, but it’s a learnable skill. Even though you may believe you are doing someone a favor, saving someone who doesn’t want to be saved may backfire. Wait until this person asks for your assistance since it’s likely that someone who truly needs it will ask you for it directly.
And remember
Even as you’re Reaching Out
To REACH IN
f i r s t
IS THIS HELPING THEM
MORE THAN
APPEASING ME. . . ?
LITTLE SPEECH BUBBLES OVER OUR HEADS JUST MIGHT BE A VERY DANGEROUS THING IF OTHERS COULD READ THEM AS EASILY AS SEEING THEM. . .
Time Magazine recently came out with an interesting article that TALKS about way more than JUNETEENTH. . .It talks about how we EXPERIENCE such things based on the Language we use and Hear
As the United States celebrates its the second year with Juneteenth as a federal holiday, many articles will be written about race relations. But Cydney broached one topic that often falls under the radar: stereotypes.
From the first instant our eyes alight on a television or phone screen, we are inundated with a curated set of images that (supposedly) depict the world around us. These images often show people of color through a stereotypical lens, and these stereotypes bleed into our everyday lives—our workplaces, our social lives, our politics. As a social psychologist at Yale University, Cydney took a look at figuring out exactly how stereotypes hold us back, and what we can do about it.
She talked about being a young Black girl growing up in Prince George’s County, Maryland, Cydney loved the movies. Each year, she and her brothers would gleefully wait in line to get the best seat in the theater for the latest Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or superhero film.
Even then, she talked how she was struck by the characters she saw. Few looked like her or her family. Those that did were one-dimensional, with limited speaking roles, often playing supporting roles to White characters. They were disproportionately poor and often criminal. They were rarely desired, easily disposed of, and never granted the nuanced and flawed inner worlds granted to White characters.
These stereotypes, rightly so, puzzled her. Prince George’s County, Maryland, is a majority-Black county—home to doctors, lawyers, politicians, and other Black professionals. The Black characters she saw on television didn’t reflect the rich, diverse, and joyful lives she saw around her. Why does the media put people of color into boxes? How do these stereotypes harm us as individuals and a society?
Cydney became a social psychologist to answer these questions. Twenty years later, she now studied stereotypes, determining how they maintain inequality and worm their way into day-to-day interactions. Across dozens of studies featuring thousands of participants, I find that stereotypes influence how we relate to others, leaking into conversations through the very words that people use.
In one test, Cydney focused on White Americans. White people are subject to stereotypes, too. They’re labeled as more competent than Black people and Latina/os, and White people think that other racial groups see them as racist and entitled. She predicted that White Americans, particularly those who want to connect across racial divides—White liberals—try to reverse these stereotypes through the very words that they use.
Cydney asked over two thousand White Americans to introduce themselves to a Black or White person online. As predicted, White liberals used fewer words related to competence (like “competitive” or “powerful”) when speaking to a Black person.
This “competence downshift” isn’t limited to a lab. Cydney analyzed over 20 years of campaign speeches by White Democratic and Republican presidential candidates and found that White Democrats used fewer words related to competence when addressing mostly-minority audiences (e.g., NAACP ) versus mostly-White ones (e.g., American Federation of Teachers). White Republicans didn’t downshift competence, likely because they’re less interested in getting along with people of color. Sure enough, White Democrats were more likely to address audiences of color than Republicans.
For White liberals, this behavior may backfire. Cydney’s and her colleagues are now testing whether White liberals who use less competent language are seen as patronizing by Black observers. If so, they may reduce, rather than improve, their chances of cross-racial connection by downshifting competence.
Do people of color also counter stereotypes using language? To find out, Cydney analyzed 250,000 congressional remarks and one million tweets by Black and Latina/o politicians in Congress and Twitter. She focused on Black Americans and Latina/os because they tend to be stereotyped as lower in status and powerthan White Americans. Cydney focused on those who are more conservative because they tend to have more positive attitudes toward White Americans and negative attitudes toward their own racial group.
She found that Black Americans and Latina/os who were more conservative used more competent language than their more liberal peers in these mostly-White settings. (There was no such effect among White politicians, or when she asked Black people to talk to other Black people.)
T H I S :
These data suggest that people have a profound desire to reverse negative stereotypes, and this desire shows up in everyday conversation. Stereotypes force us into rigid boxes, and we try to break free of them using the most primary tool available to us: our words.
Now an adult, Cydney still loves mainstream television and movies—and she still is largely disappointed by what she sees. Most characters are White, the vast majority of spoken lines go to White characters, and many Black characters are rooted in stereotypes. (The latest season of Netflix’s hit Stranger Things provides a vivid example.) Awareness and research can help us understand what stereotypes are and how they are harmful, but until we enact large-scale, cultural changes that challenge these stereotypes, we will all continue to be shackled by them.
Maybe until the
YOUNG
T E A C H
D E M O N O S T R A T E
S H O W
us
THAT WE ARE THE DIFFERENCES
created
had
experienced
word by word
deed by deed
person by person
STEREOTYPE
by
STEREOTYPE
can end
i n s t a n t l y
by never be
taught
learned
perpetuated
I have shared this video several times for various presentations I have given
I have shared this video on a Monday morning blog post before, too
I have to have its message KNOWN to me again and to be reminded just how much I need to HEAR WHAT ANOTHER HEAR’S. . .
“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each others’ eyes for an instant?” – Henry David Thoreau
Every day, every moment, is an opportunity to let go of what no longer serves us and let it die…
And to embrace what brings out the best in ourselves and others.
This video, “If We Could See Inside Each Others’ Hearts” is an opportunity to do that.
It is a profound look at life, in 4 minutes. This one will have you welling up with tears as the camera wanders and shows the inner lives of people around us as they do their daily tasks. Most of it is set in a hospital, where there is so much worry, sadness, some joy, bad news, good news, no news, anxiety, fear — just like our own lives. . .
Magnified
We’ve all been there. We’ve all experienced at least one of these people’s lives, and that’s what brings the message of this video so close to home.
We ALL have our stories. Others have theirs. But we never really know, we don’t fully connect, because most of us walk around keeping most of our thoughts and feelings to ourselves.
S T I L L
If we could see inside other peoples’ hearts, this is what we’d see. . .
Psssssssssssssssssssssst:
Look Again
(c l o s e r)
Put this under the
TOO FREAKING PRESH
File:
The other day as I was leaving a patient’s house
the husband was walking me out the front door
and he showed me his wedding ring.
“We’ve taken our wedding rings off 639 times…The first of every month celebrating our anniversary. And then we put each others on and say, ‘with this ring I thee wed.’
They’ve been married 53 yrs and 3 months.
DID YOU HEAR THE SOUND OF THE RING
It’s the sound that could never be replicated from
a phone
a bell
a song
a computer generated video. . .
A RING
way too distinct for any of those other
RINGS
but once seen
e x p e r i e n c e d
YOU NEVER FORGET THE SOUND
The tears in his eyes
ran down my cheeks
as I drove away. . .
The Lesson:
HIS LOVE HAS LIFE!
And now. . .
so does mine!
(o u r s)
JILL SUTTIE from Greater Good Magazine gives us report that allows us to take a closer look how LETTING IT FLY might be a good thing. . .
We all get upset from time to time—some of us more than others. Whether we’re sad about the loss of a loved one, angry at friends or family, or fearful about the state of the world, it often feels good to let it all out. . .
That’s because sharing our emotions reduces our stress while making us feel closer to others we share with and providing a sense of belonging. When we open up our inner selves and people respond with sympathy, we feel seen, understood, and supported.
But “sharing” covers a lot of different modes of communication. Are some healthier than others, over the long run? Science suggests that it depends, in part, on how you share and how people respond to you. Expressing our emotions often to others may actually make us feel worse, especially if we don’t find a way to gain some perspective on why we feel the way we do and take steps to soothe ourselves.
Our emotions are valuable sources of information, alerting us that something is wrong in our environment and needs our attention. Whether we need to confront someone who’s abusing us, hide to avoid danger, or seek comfort from friends, feelings like anger, fear, and sadness help us prepare to meet the moment.
But if feelings are internal signals, why do we share them with others?
“We want to connect with other people who can help validate what we’re going through, and venting really does a pretty good job at fulfilling that need,” says researcher Ethan Kross, author of the book Chatter. “It feels good to know there’s someone there to rely on who cares enough to take time to listen.”
Sharing our feelings also provides an opportunity to gain insight into what’s causing our difficult feelings and avert future upsets. Sometimes, just verbalizing what’s bothering us to another person helps to clarify the situation and name the emotions involved. Or, if we get caught in emotional whirlwinds, our confidants can provide new perspectives and offer sound advice, says Kross.
Unfortunately, this latter part of the equation often gets lost in the shuffle, he adds.
“When we get stuck in a venting session, it feels good in the moment, because we’re connecting with other people,” he says. “But if all we do is vent, we don’t address our cognitive needs, too. We aren’t able to make sense of what we’re experiencing, to make meaning of it.”
So, while venting may be good for building supportive relationships and feel good in the moment, it’s not enough to help us through. If others simply listen and empathize, they may inadvertently extend our emotional upset.
For many years, psychologists believed that dark emotions, like anger, needed to be released physically. This led to a movement to “let it all out,” with psychologists literally telling people to hit soft objects, like pillows or punching bags, to release pent-up feelings.
It turns out, however, that this type of emotional venting likely doesn’t soothe anger as much as augment it. That’s because encouraging people to act out their anger makes them relive it in their bodies, strengthening the neural pathways for anger and making it easier to get angry the next time around. Studies on venting anger (without effective feedback), whether online or verbally, have also found it to be generally unhelpful.
The same is true of grief or anxiety following trauma. While we should of course seek support from those around us during difficult times of loss and pain, if we simply relive our experience without finding some way to soothe ourselves or find meaning, it could extend our suffering.
For some time, people who worked with trauma victims encouraged them to “debrief” afterward, having them talk through what happened to them to ward off post-traumatic stress. But a randomized controlled study found that this didn’t help much, likely because debriefing doesn’t help distance people from their trauma. Similarly, students who vented their anxiety after 9/11 suffered from more anxiety up to four months later than those who didn’t. As the study authors write, their “focus on and venting of emotions was found to be uniquely predictive of longer-term anxiety.”
Venting through social media can do the same thing. In one study, researchers surveyed students attending Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University after mass shootings occurred at each campus to see how venting their grief over social media helped them recover. While students thought that venting was beneficial, their post-traumatic stress and depression scores actually went up the more they vented.
Besides making us feel worse, venting can also have a negative effect on our audience.
While supportive friends and family hopefully care enough to listen and sympathize with us, it can be frustrating to sit with someone who vents frequently when that person seems to be wallowing in emotion without learning from their experience. And being around someone stuck in anger, fear, or sadness cycles can be overwhelming for listeners who may end up “catching” the emotions themselves.
“Repeatedly venting over and over and over again, can create friction in social relationships,” says Kross. “There’s often a limit to how much listeners, your friends, can actually hear.”
I know that I am guilty of wanting someone to listen to me when I’m upset—and not wanting advice right off the bat. If I’m in the midst of pain, trying to talk me out of my feelings or to offer pat solutions seems insensitive or even patronizing.
However, Kross doesn’t advocate for that. Instead, he says, there’s an art to being a listener. It takes a combination of empathy or sympathy—and waiting for the right moment before offering perspective.
“People are going to differ, depending on what they’re dealing with, how intense their experiences are,” he says. “Being sensitive to the fact that some people may need more time before they’re ready to transition from venting to thinking is really important.”
There is a healthier way to vent, Kross says. He suggests these guidelines:
Be selective about when you vent. There are lots of ways to deal with difficult emotions, and not all of them involve other people. Some people can gain perspective on their own, by writing their thoughts down or gaining distance from them through meditation. Kross recommends changing your environment to help you process emotions and tamp down rumination that might otherwise keep you stuck in an emotional whirlwind.
When you vent to others, prompt them to offer perspective. If you find yourself venting to someone without your emotions dissipating (or maybe getting worse), you may be caught in a cycle of “co-rumination”—a rehashing that can keep you stuck. To get out of that, you can ask the person to step back and help you reframe your experience by asking, “How should I think about this differently?” or “What should I do in this situation?” This will cue them to offer perspective and assure them that you’re looking for something more than a listening ear.
Consider to whom you vent. Before venting to someone, ask yourself, “Did this person really help me the last time I talked to them, or did they just make me feel worse?” If someone is there for you, but doesn’t tend to broaden your perspective, you may just get more stirred up emotionally. Being more deliberate about who you vent to could help you in the long run.
Be careful around online venting. While sharing our emotions online can help us feel better in the moment and identify supportive allies, results can be mixed. For one thing, negative emotions easily spread online, which may create a herd mentality, resulting in bullying or trolling—especially if you identify a particular person as responsible for your feelings. While it’s unclear if venting online is an overall good or bad thing, it may not help you gain the perspective you need to move forward.
Still, all in all, Kross says venting is a good thing, helping us cope. If we can get past the letting off steam part, we can feel better in the long run and keep our relationships strong, too.
“Venting serves some function,” he says. “It has benefits for the self in terms of satisfying our social and emotional needs. We just need to find out what the correct dosage is and make sure to offer to supplement that with cognitive reframing.
Better to be an
E A R
than a
M O U T H
sometimes
and having a
VENT OFF
(some of my co-workers and I have an unofficial VENT OFF every day where we LET IT FLY and are SAFELY HEARD)
Come. . .
LET US REASON
(Do I ever have an Ear for you!)
I love words. . .
I love reading them
I love writing them
I love listening to them
I love transcending them. . .
These words
This poem from
Phyllis Cole-Dai
seems to illu8strate each of these things. . .
A good Monday morning blog. . . ?
Wait. . What. . . ?
Were you expecting the usual Monday Morning Video Blog post. . . ?
I have never offered you a chance
JUST TO LISTEN
to words
. . .to maybe close your eyes
and just listen to
some nicely arranged words
that paint only colors you can see
on the blank canvas of your mind
. . . close your eyes
make your own video
as you hear Phyllis Cole-Dai’s poem
that came to her in a dream right before the pandemic hit. . .
As you hear words
v i s i o n
Somebody
that this might include
that has is dying
has died
but never been lost from you. . .
May her very words
Become Flesh
that massages the forehead
of your grieving
troubled mind
as it intertwines its fingers in between yours
as they never let go
but now feels so very empty just the same. . .
May it put a beat in your heart
that’s not only everlasting
but ever present
ever easing
(assuring)
Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. . .
q u i e t
see with your ears
(Phyllis’s original thought was to release the book on Memorial Day last year, but the pandemic accelerated her plans. She made the book available solely through her website, so that she could sign every copy that was ordered, and give people the opportunity to request a personalized inscription if they so wished.
When she lost her own father recently to COVID-19, Phyllis would receive, among the many messages and gestures of condolence, solidarity and care, a copy of her own poem — coming to her once again, she notes, “from the outside– as it did in my dream.”
In her words, “You may choose to share it during a memorial service or other farewell gathering. Save it as a keepsake, attaching photographs, jotting down memories and reflections. Offer it as a gift of compassion. However you choose to use it, may it bring you consolation.”)
Listening doesn’t always mean Hearing
Sometimes when you Listen with more than you Ears you’ll hear the most amazing things. . .
SIMON GREER a freelance journalist recently wrote in The Greater Good a timely article that takes a look at the importance of LISTENING more DEEPLY and Speaking/Shouting (JUST) less. . .
At the start of 2021, five very different college campuses kicked off a program called Bridging the Gap. The program is focused on deep listening as the basis for effective communication across lines of difference. The promise of the course is that if we engage the “other,” listen to all stakeholders, and lead with humility and curiosity, then we can better solve the pressing issues facing our nation.
This has been a truly unique time to try to teach bridge-building and promote the notion that the heroes are the bridge-builders. It is a tribute to the students on these very different campuses—schools as liberal as Oberlin College and as conservative as Spring Arbor University—that they have leaned into this approach and these practices at a moment when our democracy seems to be tearing itself apart.
As recently observed the inauguration of Joe Biden as the 46th president of the United States, our country is on edge. So far, the new year has seen violence in our nation’s capital, a second impeachment, and political fractures at the highest levels, further rattling a nation already pummeled by a pandemic, economic collapse, and political polarization not seen since the Civil War. There is a feeling of fear, and maybe even panic, as we hold our breath and pray for a peaceful transfer of power today.
So, in that context, it might be hard to imagine engaging in deep listening across lines of difference. It might even seem counterintuitive. There is a legitimate fear that this “other” might not just disagree with you, or even fundamentally challenge your core values—they might actually be dangerous.
So now the question remains, now what? If you aren’t going engage deeply with those we might call the “other,” then what is your plan? Unfriend everyone on social media who doesn’t belong to your political party? Support your state in seceding from the union? Turn your home into a fortified bunker? Immigrate to Canada?
LEARN A NEW WAY TO LISTEN/COMMUNICATE?
The most concerning part for many is that underneath the multiple political crises in our country today, there is an even more foundational crisis: our lack of 100% commitment to each other’s humanity and the lack of faith in people that results from that.
As Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy, believes about people on death row: “They are more than the worst thing they have ever done.” And so I would ask us for a moment to consider the application of that principle to these 75 million Americans who voted for President Trump and the 81 million who voted for Joe Biden. While many of us have been convinced by the wisdom that people on death row are better than their worst deed, we are still quick to condemn “those voters” as worse than their worst vote. Why have we, so far, been unwilling and unable to apply Stevenson’s teaching here in the political context?
In the face of the political, economic, and cultural trends that have been heaving us in this direction for some years now, I have been inspired to return to my roots—to my deep faith in people, to a humble curiosity about why people think the way they think, to a sense of wonder as to how we construct our realities, to the brutal truth of what so many face as they try to get through each day, to the courage to meet and accept people where they are, and to the practice of deep listening.Bridging the Gap students.
Bridging the Gap (BTG) was piloted at the beginning of 2020 with 17 students from Spring Arbor University and Oberlin College. According to the prevailing societal perceptions and stereotypes, Oberlin students are condescending, liberal snowflakes; conversely, Spring Arbor students carry the label of hate-filled, conservative evangelicals—and, according to this narrative, both should see the other as their enemy. But BTG’s premise is that the heroes can be the bridge-builders. So we brought together these two groups of people, who were expected to deeply disagree with each other, to build relationships, listen deeply, and explore the very issues that might drive them apart.
Here are some of those recent findings and hope as this project goes forward:
The initial invitation purposefully set the tone for the entire experience. The genuine INTENTIONS:
Building on this invitation, and before students from each college met, there was a mutual investment in intensive skills-building, so that their eventual meeting would be profoundly different from what they’ve grown used to in discourse and politics.
One of the first skills that was taught was “listening.” While listening may seem like an obvious and easy task, the truth is very few of us have formal training in listening. And while we think it’s as simple and automatic as breathing, the truth is that true listening takes training, practice, and a deep commitment.
When someone else is speaking, it’s easy to daydream, plan replies, get distracted by judgment, and interrupt with self-centered questions or quick-fix solutions. Listening deeply means silencing that noise, listening not just with your ears but with every sense you’ve got, every cell in your body. It means listening to all that is said and unsaid, to the body language, the tone, the eye movement. It’s full-body listening.
This type of listening builds trust, opens doors, and offers a path to deep discovery and a sacred connection that forms the basis for new understandings and otherwise unimaginable possibilities. Study after study shows in sector after sector—in medicine, marriage, real estate sales, and more—that true listening generates better results. And yet most of us go through our entire education without having learned how to do it.
With this foundation of intention and training, the group moved into the realm of feedback. Often in efforts to bridge across deep divides, there is either a desire to avoid the “tense stuff” for fear of damaging the relationship, or to go hard at the most fraught areas to prove our own commitments and defend deeply held values.
The BTG project model resisted both urges. Their approach was to invest in the relationships, knowing that the capacity to disagree constructively is directly tied to the strength of the relationship. So, we didn’t tackle the hardest things first—but we were also totally up front that we aren’t afraid of those things and don’t mean to sweep them under the rug. We promised that the group would come to them, in time. We also taught an approach to giving feedback that distinguished between experience and interpretation. This approach emphasizes disclosure rather than accusation, and it offers a common framework that supports participants having hard conversations in a structured manner where everyone knows how to engage.
This group also stayed away from the most common tools used in debates or disagreements, which is to throw out statistics and facts to prove a point. Instead, BTG used storytelling as a way of going deeper and diffusing tensions that might cause someone to get locked into their position. Our goal was to open up space for the type of dynamic tension that can create motion and unleash new and positive energy.
Storytelling is a way to express beliefs and where they come from, humanizing a potential “opponent” in our eyes and vice versa. The group kept it simple but taught that good storytelling includes telling your story like a good play, in three acts:
Additionally, it encouraged students to show and not just tell. For instance, not just saying “the movie was funny,” but sharing a line that actually made you laugh.
The encounter is where the rubber hit the road! This is when the students met and applied all the skills they’d learned about how to build bridges, communicate constructively, and cultivate relationships with the “other.”
What underpinned this phase were a handful of crucial and, perhaps, unorthodox principles. To begin, it was decided to start with values and stories, rather than immediately taking on a hot-button issue, to get to know the person across the table. We encouraged students to learn about each other’s background and to try and understand what makes them tick, whose shoulders they stand on, and why they see the world the way they do.
In fact, in the first group activity, they used 21/64’s deck of 50 Picture Your LegacyTM cards with images on them and asked the students to sort through them to find the three images that most reflect the values they try to live by and the way they try to lead their lives. Then we asked them to find the three cards that resonated least with their values and how they try to lead their lives. The students shared their top and bottom cards with the group, and they worked together to look for areas of alignment or disagreement, seek out patterns, and try to get to know each other at the level of values.
It was made sure participants were staying in motion. These issues are big, they’re complex, and they’re stuck. It is strongly believed that physically keeping things moving could help make students feel more open and receptive to different beliefs and opinions. It also was made sure to mix up the groups and their sizes, composition, and dynamics. This helped keep the positive energy alive without leaving anyone trapped in a dead-end conversation.
Many experts agree that upwards of 80% of all communication is nonverbal. So, we wanted to include exercises that allowed students to express themselves without speaking, especially when they were beginning to tackle more divisive topics.
For instance, they wanted to explore where there were strong, divergent opinions and even sharp disagreements. To do this, they used an activity called “Lay It on the Line,” where they would start with a statement, such as “I believe in each American citizen’s unrestricted right to bear arms.” Students would then physically, and silently, position themselves along a spectrum with “strongly agree” on one end and “strongly disagree” on the other. This nonverbal, but revealing, exercise gave insight into where there may be great (and surprising) splits. They could start to explore those gaps without locking into a debate-style format. Students observed their peers moving in unexpected ways, patterns were upended just as they were revealed, and gradations were stark just as we moved quickly through the questions before labels could take hold.
As mentioned, they were not trying to approach this project using the standard format and techniques—they know that hasn’t worked so far. They wanted to set up conversations with unusual and unexpected content. The approach was to selectively tackle controversial issues head-on.
For example, they viewed a film called Belief, where people as diverse as New York Times columnist David Brooks, Megan Phelps-Roper (granddaughter of the founder of Westboro Baptist Church), and Illyasa Shabazz (daughter of Malcolm X) shared their relationship to belief, love, God, and the soul. The speakers had competing perspectives, and afterward we asked students to break into small groups to “share a time when your beliefs informed a private decision in your life.” After some discussion of the private realm, then they turned to the public square and asked, “How does your belief system influence your positions on important public policy issues?”
In a group of Christians and non-Christians, this was potentially quite divisive territory. But these discussions were set up as an invitation to reflect on beliefs, and the role of beliefs in constructing worldview and the “why?” underneath stances on issues. Perhaps as a result, they did not become arguments. Instead, the conversations were places for students to disclose how they think and convey their truths. Those truths then interacted with other different truths and the complexity of who we are was revealed.
The last phase of the program was to bring the skills and the encounter to bear on a pressing and contentious policy issue to see what might be possible when we apply this approach.
We selected criminal justice and utilized the BTG multi-stakeholder approach. Just as we had skillfully encountered “the other” in the second phase of the program, now they encountered all sorts of “others” as they met with stakeholders from across the criminal justice system. Corrections officers to people who are incarcerated, the formerly incarcerated and the corrections officer’s union, the reform advocates to the head of the Department of Corrections, the legislators who approve the budget for corrections—we met them all.
It was not lost on students that these stakeholders don’t ever sit down all together and that their caricatures of each other can often be quite limiting, especially as they seek political and policy solutions to complex problems.
Students quickly understood that you are only enhanced, not diminished, by hearing from the full range of stakeholders, even if you deeply disagree with their perspective. It became clear that when you miss an important stakeholder’s voice, it not only generates resistance from those who feel left out, and may be crucial to successful implementation, but results in blind spots as you miss key factors and interests in the system as it is.
And, most importantly, you might well miss deeply buried opportunities for common ground where the most unlikely of allies might discover that, even if they don’t like each other, they have common interests.
Through the policy-application phase and up until their final presentations, the students kept encountering these opportunities. If our criminal justice system is failing with both painfully high recidivism rates among those who are incarcerated and the highest suicide rates of any profession among those who work in prisons, then shouldn’t the fact that the system is killing the two largest stakeholder groups be a first step toward common ground?
If I’m completely honest, I stand stunned from time to time while listening to “the other side.” Often, they seem to live in a completely different country from the one I live in. But I severely make every attempt to LISTEN
To get beyond this crippling divisiveness, we must seek out a deeper understanding of the call for unity, the spirit of unity, the intention of unity. It isn’t that the intention is wrong, far from it. The problem is that unity fails when it is understood solely as an intention. Unity must not be just a principle. Unity must be a practice.
Bridging the Gap is about practice, more than it’s about language or beliefs. If we are going to find unity again in our country, we need to practice it. Those who practice it we call bridge-builders. When they are viewed as our heroes, not the sell-outs or villains, then our culture will be well on its way to repair and healing. The good news is that more and more college students are hungry for it.
Maybe the best way to end this particular blog post is to quote, the late, great Larry King who once said,
“I NEVER LEARNED ANYTHING WHILE I WAS TALKING”
Michael W. Smith
is a Christian Artist
with a most worldly
ALL ENCOMPASSING
m e s s a g e
that goes way beyond
a piano note
or nicely worded lyrics:
Oh these days I’m at a distance
Sirens scream but I don’t listen
There’s a million distractions I can’t escape
Like I’m sleepwalking now but I’m wide awake
And the picture I painted I want to change
Right now
Bring me into the conversation
All my walls, you can see them shaking, yeah
I’m staring at you, hanging on every word you’re saying
Won’t you bring me into the conversation
One by one we’re separated
What I thought was love just looked like hatred
I’ve been losing myself trying to prove you wrong
And right now all I know is I can’t go on
So I’m stepping across all the lines I’ve drawn
Right now, right now
Bring me into the conversation (conversation, conversation)
All my walls, you can see them shaking, oh yeah
I’m staring at you, hanging on every word you’re saying
Won’t you bring me into the conversation.
I just wanna talk to you
I just wanna talk to you
I just wanna talk to you
I just wanna talk to you
I just wanna hear what you’re saying
Won’t you bring me into the conversation
All my walls you can see them shaking, oh yeah
I’m staring at you, hanging on every word you’re saying
Oh Won’t you bring me into the conversation
I just wanna talk to you
I just wanna hear what you’re saying oh yeah
I M A G I N E
DARE BELIEVE
UNDERSTAND
KNOW
The world could literally change
Be transformed
Come off it’s tracks
If we just said
“BRING ME INTO THE CONVERSATION”
“I JUST WANT TO TALK WITH YOU”
“TELL ME YOUR STORY”
“I REALLY WANT TO HEAR WHAT YOU ARE SAYING”
L I S T E N
l i s t e n
I just don’t want to talk with you. . .
I want to
Listen
TO HEAR
WHAT YOU ARE SAYING
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm of the Day:
Maybe before you bring me into the
c o n v e r s a t i o n
I need to prove to you
s h o w y o u
GIVE YOU
a reason
to do
S O