Common Ground

July 7, 2020

I have been doing a lot of reading lately. Like many of us I find peace and solace in my books. I also find knowledge and personal growth within books. Often I am reading two at the same time. One non-fiction and one fiction. Currently my fiction choices have been classics. I have enjoyed rereading many of my favorites from Jane Austen to George Eliot to Tolstoy to…you name it.

This week I started to read The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky. This is one I have never read before, though I have enjoyed several of his other writings. While losing myself in this book I came across a great quote. I marked it, and have kept going back to read it again:

…for it often only seems that there are no points in common, when there really are some…it’s just laziness that makes people classify themselves according to appearances, and fail to find anything in common…

It strikes me how applicable this is today, though Dostoevsky first published this in 1869. People tend to stay the same, don’t they? Classifying ourselves into this or that category. Separating from those in the other categories. Ridiculing them for being different from us. Turning them into something less than human. It is a difficult, dangerously slippery slope we take when we start separating instead of pulling resources and ideas together. It seems we have been particularly naughty humans through the last few election seasons. And here we are again.

We are just never going to get anywhere as long as we keep up the laziness of classifying ourselves. We need the good ideas and ingenuity offered from all sides. As long as we continue to disregard ideas simply because they came from “them” we will be stagnate. We are far better off when we find the common between us and work together to better our lives. And there is so much common between us. Let us remember that as we go through this election season. Let’s listen for the common ground, and try not to classify ourselves as anything other than human. These are just my thoughts for today. I am sure you have your own ideas, but maybe we think alike in some ways.

Love and kindness to you all!

Lisa