Processing the Election: We're All In This Together
Nathan Peterson
Singer-songwriter, speaker, author, husband, father, and human ~ passionate about the ways that breathing, music, and togetherness can lead us to healing, creativity, and rest.
As we process this election, regardless of whether our candidate won or lost, here are a few things I am thinking about...
My wife and I sometimes disagree. It's easy to believe that our disagreement is the problem when our real problem is that very belief.
The pain we experience from disagreements with each other does not come from our beliefs about the topic; it comes from our beliefs about each other. Understanding this can change everything.
Disagreements themselves are neutral. They can lead to division or progress. How we view our disagreements—and each other in the midst of our disagreement—determines this.
At the end of the day, regardless of who "wins" or "loses" a disagreement, my wife and I are part of the same family.
An alternative to seeing voting—or disagreements—as a means to one party winning and the other losing, we can view it as a negotiation. In a negotiation, there are compromises on both sides—even for the side that "wins"—but the goal is not to defeat the other, it is to come to an agreement so that we can move forward together.
The purpose of voting, negotiating, and even disagreement is unity and progress. If that were not so, we would have no reason to talk—we would just go our separate ways.
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A house divided cannot stand... but a house that is unable to tolerate disagreements cannot grow.
When my wife and I finish an argument, sometimes it seems as if one of us has "won" and the other has "lost." In the cases where I am the "winner," I rarely feel like a winner.
Today we woke up as a country having finished negotiations around some incredibly important issues. Those of us whose candidate lost did not "lose," and those whose candidate won did not "win"... we simply made a collective decision. Something adults sometimes have to do.
None of us can possibly know if this collective decision was the right or wrong one. But one thing is certain: the best way to go from here is forward and together.
The ability to vote is living in a house where there is space for disagreements, enabling forward movement and growth, however clunky.
Today I support and accept my fellow Americans—Republicans, Democrats, and Independents—as part of the family into which I was born.
We're all in this together, if we choose to be.