Walking in Someone Else’s Shoes Can Cause Blisters. Try It Anyway.

The 2024 presidential election certainly reflected the polarized state of political landscape in the United States. As has been true in many recent elections, about half of us are unhappy with the outcome. Of course, conflict and disagreement are not new in this country. We have been arguing about how to govern ourselves, who we consider citizens, and our role in the world since the country was founded, and many of our elections have been contentious.

But life in the 21st century poses some unique challenges. The economic uncertainties engendered by a globally connected economy, the stress of the Covid-19 panic and lockdown and the increase in climate change-related natural disasters have forced all of us to confront our own mortality, and the fragility of our sense of control. The rapid pace of technology, the difficulty of tracking an incessant flow of information via the internet and social media, and the struggle to determine whether the things we are seeing and reading are real is taking a toll on all of us. As rates of depression, anxiety, and stress continue to rise, we are all struggling to maintain our balance and adjust to the changes.

In a world where it is easy to pick and choose the news we want to listen to, and to surround ourselves with people who support our world view it is easy to vilify the people who don’t see things the way we do. To counteract this it is incumbent on all of us to step back and assess whether what we are doing is helping us as a country and as individuals. The truth is that we all rely on cognitive strategies to protect ourselves from unpleasant realities. We routinely act like we have the power to keep ourselves and our families safe without societal assistance, distance ourselves from people that make us question our own core beliefs and values, and make decisions based on emotions rather than logic when it seems to be a more comfortable path. When we don’t agree with other people, we are quick to classify them as our enemies, and to blame them for everything we don’t like.

Perhaps instead we could all spend more time thinking about why other Americans don’t see the things the way we do. Rather than dismissing people we disagree with as uninformed or uneducated, we need to listen to their concerns, think about the world from their position, and refrain from assuming we know more than they do. In point of fact, as a country we have fallen out of the habit of listening to each other, much as unhappy couples do. When we assume we know what our partners think, spend our time thinking of our responses instead of listening to their concerns, and behave as though our needs are the only things that matters, we undermine the strength of our relationships. When we treat people with contempt, we further alienate them, and our chance to understand each other.

So how do we move forward? Perhaps we could start by trying to identify our similarities, our shared goals, and mutual hopes for the future. We cannot learn from each other if we aren’t willing to listen as well as talk. We could also focus on educating ourselves about the things we are concerned about and being more discerning about all the information we consume. Just because we read it, or hear someone say it, doesn’t mean it is true. There will be policies we disagree with, and trends we don’t like, but we can and have corrected course many times in the past and taking action to solve problems and trusting in the future, and each other, is the only way we can move forward.