“I found myself so torn up by the radical political stances I was seeing, that I actually found myself feeling hate. It was consuming me … and that’s not who I am or who I want to be.
So, I decided to make myself look for something I might like about those people outside of politics, instead of sitting there seething about their political positions.”
I was proud of my client. Not because he had changed his political beliefs. He hadn’t.
Not because he suddenly agreed with people he strongly disagreed with. He didn’t.
He’d simply decided that he did not want his disagreement with another human being to determine what he looked for in them. And perhaps even more importantly, he did not want it determining who he was becoming.
It reminded me of two family interventions I was involved in recently.
In the first, a family came together because someone they loved had gotten severely off track.
One family member said something I will not soon forget: “This is the hill we all have to be willing to die on. Even though she is struggling and making poor decisions right now, we know who she is deep down. Our desire is to get her help. Not trash her.”
I loved that.
They were not denying the addiction.
They were not minimizing the consequences of her choices.
They were simply refusing to let her worst choices become the sum total of who she was.
They could still see MORE in her.
And they wanted to call that forward.
The second intervention was very different.
This family also had a loved one who’d made some poor choices and decisions. But when I mentioned the help and healing, I believed he needed, their focus was elsewhere.
They felt he could not be helped or healed until he was exposed. They wanted employers, neighbors, and church members to know what he’d done. Their attention was primarily on bringing MORE of his failures and weaknesses into the light.
I’m not telling you one family was right and the other was wrong.
Accountability matters.
Consequences matter.
Truth matters.
Sometimes love requires very difficult confrontation.
But I found the contrast fascinating.
One family was looking for what needed to be called OUT.
The other was also looking for what might still be called FORTH.
And I wondered: What happens to us when we spend our lives looking for MORE of what is wrong in people?
And what happens when … even while telling the truth about what is wrong … we train ourselves to look for MORE of what is still good?
My client had begun asking himself essentially the same question.
He is in a 12-step program, and he said something that made me smile.
“I’ve realized that people have their own Steps to work. Who am I to be doing their inventory by hating on them? Maybe instead I should be praying that they find the surrender and help they need to begin working their own Steps.”
There was wisdom in that.
Because perhaps the question is not only:
What do I see when I look at you?
Perhaps another equally important question is:
WHAT HAPPENS IN ME BECAUSE OF WHAT I KEEP LOOKING FOR IN YOU?
1. Calling out the MORE in others makes our own song more beautiful.
“I felt so much angst rising up in me when hearing political extremists speak that I was miserable!”
My client told me something remarkable after he began intentionally looking for good in people with whom he had strong political differences.
“You know, after I started looking for something good in them (even a shirt I liked) … I felt my anxiety go down. Literally. And I found that jealousy, resentment, and judgment took a back seat. I actually apologized to my wife because I realized I’d been letting all that pour out on her … even though it wasn’t her I was upset.”
There it was. He changed what he was looking for in them … and something began changing in him.
I could relate.
There was a time in my own life when doubt and skepticism colored much of the way I saw the world. I thought skepticism protected me. In some ways, perhaps it did.
But it also kept my heart stirred up. It made it difficult to release things I could not control.
And underneath it was a persistent feeling that if I remained vigilant enough … if I anticipated enough, questioned enough and worried enough … perhaps I could somehow keep life under control.
Eventually I began discovering something else.
There was a song in me that all that doubt, fear, and skepticism had been drowning out.
As I began recovering more of myself, my worldview slowly changed.
I became less interested in searching people for evidence of what was wrong with them … and far more interested in looking for evidence of who they could become.
That shift has shaped much of my life’s work.
It’s why I can sit with someone who’s made terrible choices and still wonder:
What else is in there?
What got buried?
What has life grown in them?
What is still possible?
What MORE might be waiting to come forward?
Perhaps that is part of what it means to sing our own song.
Our song becomes more beautiful when it helps someone else hear theirs.
And somewhere along the way, that became part of my song: Building a bridge toward the MORE people still carry within them.
(From my AA friend. “I keep my spoon in my own bowl’. I remember when I first heard this in an AA meeting. Of course, I laughed but at the same time a truth came alive in me … the ONLY person I can ever change is me. That’s now become my mission … it’s making life simpler.”)
2. Looking for the song in others makes room for their humanity.
Toward the end of our session, my client said: “Once I started looking for the good in people I’d disagreed with, I realized there was, probably, more good in them than bad. Then something else happened. Even when I disagreed with them, my disagreement became softer.
I wasn’t as harsh about the sound of their voice or the words they used. I guess you could say I’d demonized them. Now I was humanizing them. They’re humans, just like me.”
I could see the change before he finished saying it. His posture had changed. The tightness in his jaw had softened. The tension I had seen across his forehead and around his eyes was different.
His political opinions had not changed. His relationship to the people holding different opinions had. That distinction totally matters.
We do not have to pretend harmful behavior is harmless.
We do not have to abandon discernment.
We do not have to agree with everyone, trust everyone, approve of everyone or remain silent when something needs to be confronted.
Ego becomes all about us when it turns into obsessive thinking that builds nothing but angst in us.
There’s a difference between identifying something troubling in another human being … and allowing that troubling thing to become all we are willing to see.
Because when I reduce you to the thing I dislike most about you, something happens to me, too.
My curiosity shrinks.
My compassion shrinks.
My ability to hear you shrinks.
Personal growth completely stops and future vision goes blank.
Eventually, I may stop seeing a person at all and begin seeing only a category, an offense, a position, or a problem.
But when I deliberately look for even a small piece of evidence of all that person was created to be, something opens again.
Not necessarily agreement. But humanity.
I can tell the truth about what concerns me without requiring myself to hate you, judge you, or diminish you … in order to tell it.
I can hold a boundary without contempt.
I can disagree without dehumanizing.
And perhaps most importantly … I don’t have to smother my own song simply because I don’t like the sound of yours.
OUCH! That hurts to write … but it’s true for me.
And I won’t smother my song!
(I need to keep MY spoon in MY own bowl and out of yours.)
3. Looking for MORE gives us somewhere to meet.
Then my client gave me one final thought.
“One accord,” he said.
I waited.
“When we find ONE thing to be in ONE accord over, there’s unity. It doesn’t have to be EVERYTHING. But what if we looked for the ONE thing?”
I wish you could’ve seen him. This was not simply an intellectual revelation.
His words were different.
His voice was different.
His face was different.
His body was different.
It was as though his own song had become louder as he stopped devoting so much energy to silencing someone else’s.
And I thought: What if he’s right?
What if unity does not require us to agree about everything?
What if sometimes it begins when two people (who see the world very differently) are willing to ask: What is ONE thing we can stand together for?
Maybe we both love our children.
Maybe we both want our community to be safer.
Maybe we both care about someone who’s suffering.
Maybe we both believe people deserve dignity.
Maybe we both want our lives to matter.
Maybe we both know what it feels like to lose something.
Maybe we both hope tomorrow can be better than today.
One thing. One little patch of common ground. One place where my humanity can recognize yours.
Perhaps that’s enough to begin.
Because ultimately, I believe we’re all Created for MORE.
When I help you see the MORE in yourself, I do not lose any of mine. In fact, something remarkable happens.
My song gets stronger when I help you hear yours. And even stronger when I find one part of it, I can sing in harmony with!
*****
It’s one of the reasons I’m building a Bridge that welcomes everyone who longs for MORE.
Not a Bridge for perfect people…
because it would be vacant!
Not a Bridge for people who see everything exactly as I do…
because what an incredibly boring journey that would be.
And not a Bridge reserved for people who’ve finally “done enough healing”…
because healing is not a finish line we cross and never revisit.
On this Bridge, we don’t have to agree about everything.
We don’t have to have identical stories.
We don’t have to have taken the same road to get here.
We only need one place of agreement:
THERE IS MORE IN ME.
THERE IS MORE IN YOU.
AND I WANT THAT FOR BOTH OF US.
Maybe that’s where unity begins.
Not when I convince you to sing my song.
Not when you convince me to sing yours.
But when we become willing to look at one another and say:
“I believe there’s still something beautiful in you worth calling forth.”
And perhaps…
When enough of us begin doing that…
We’ll discover there was room on the Bridge for all of us.
You never truly know yourself until you know what truly matters to others. And that reserves a place for us on the Bridge!
Your song matters … and so does the song of others.