I am a recovering attorney.
I decided to become a lawyer while I was in elementary school. My experience with lawyers came entirely from watching television and reading books.
Learning about lawyers showed me how our society understands truth and justice. We believe we learn the truth through conflict. We display our differences, cross examine each other, and let our arguments speak. We believe that the most articulate person with the most powerful ideas deserves to win.
As I practiced law, I realized we do not always put our beliefs into practice.
There are times when we get more caught up in winning or losing than in the value of ideas. Some of us are more interested in playing to the sympathies of other people than in being clear. Some of us are better at appealing to peoples’ fear or anger than at solving problems well.
We try to obliterate our differences, and the people with whom we have them, by force.
Our differences matter, and so does how we work out those differences.
It is easy for us to get focused on protecting our own ideas by attacking the ideas of others. We wrap our sense of our own importance in the rightness of our answers. We like to say we are searching for the truth even as we defend our own ideas. It is tempting to circle our personal wagons, stop listening, and start fighting.
A good fight can be enjoyable. We feel reinforced in the rightness of our ideas. We relentlessly refuse to surrender. Fighting has great payoffs. It just does not resolve anything.
We cannot work out our differences by force.
How do you work out your own differences with other people?
What is the last difference you worked out with someone else?
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