Polarizing Positions

It's interesting.

When my husband and I first reconnected as friends, he and I shared fairly similar political view points.  And what we didn't agree on positionally, we felt grounded in regarding our values....faith, family, equality, justice, and opportunity.

Over the course of my adult life, I've yet to physically meet a person who holds a political position from a place of malice or evil.  In fact, anytime I take the time to probe non-judgmentally and ask them to share their story, I better understand why they believe what they do and essentially, why they fall down on either the red or blue side of the line. 

But when I really start to dig, I see even more clearly that no one truly falls into one camp or another.  People are complex creatures.  Situations that we never thought we'd experience define us, change us, and consequently, ask us to cope with circumstances that were once theoretical and now are real...and subsequently, we live most of our life in the gray.

As we consider social mediums like facebook, Twitter, gPlus where we see our friends/followers political preferences come to life, it seems more useful to probe, to garner more, as opposed to assuming that we know where they're coming from and that a snarky comment will change their mind.

If the social sphere is polarized, why would we expect that a place like Washington would be harmonious?  It is simply filled with people like us that we elected.  Polarizing positions will always exist until we decide to authentically learn more about the why's in people's lives, the stories that comprise them, and the ways that they view the world...before we're hell bent on sharing why they're wrong.