Essay: I disagree with you, and I love you

In a conversation with my friend Andy during stage 4 lockdown in Melbourne, we each expressed our views on the restrictions imposed by the Andrews Labor government. Those views were opposed. We disagreed. But it was okay. After we’d each shared our points of view, Andy paused before acknowledging how good it feels that while we disagree, we’re still in harmony with each other.

With the prevalence of social media in our lives, we’ve become adept at curation. We’ve populated our lives exclusively with preferred people and products. We join their Facebook groups and follow only like-minded individuals on Twitter and Instagram. Rarely do we encounter, much less actively seek out or speak with, those who we’re opposed to, other than for entertainment or provocation purposes, such as following Trump when you think the man’s a narcissistic lunatic but you needed to know what he was tweeting.

And so we barricade ourselves, be it unwittingly or intentionally. We mark the boundary around our lives narrowly and only allow those within it who are guaranteed to agree with us or validate our life choices. We may trick ourselves into thinking that everyone, including those closest to us, believes as we do, as we’ve effectively cut off those who don’t. We’ve diminished opportunities to meet those who have different viewpoints, and so when someone breaks through our barrier and expresses one, our tolerance may have lowered to the point where we will not hear them out, and may react dismissively at best or hatefully at worst.

We’ve divided ourselves into specific camps of ideology or partisanship, and never the twain shall meet, other than via vitriolic shouting matches into the ether. It’s increasingly rare that we use our own voices in person to exchange ideas, much less have a discussion that may take up more than a few minutes with people from another camp, be it religious, political or racial, or another class, someone who’s upbringing and everyday life is unfamiliar to us, or with another opinion or belief.

But as we compartmentalise ourselves, we are missing the opportunity to connect with others, and further take up the exploration of that elusive frontier of human discovery: improved communication, real connection.

As more and more women’s stories are told via mainstream channels, we’re hearing more and more about that attribute most strongly tied to the feminine aspect in each of us: listening. The power of listening is the respect that underlies it. Before you listen, you arrive with the time to do so and the respect for that person’s right to have their say.

In our conversation, neither Andy nor I needed the other to think the same way we do to maintain a healthy friendship. We accepted the possibility that we can hold opposing points of view and still like each other. Holding this space for each other deepened our connection.

It never ceases to amaze me how seldom we adult humans behave with maturity and respect when someone disagrees with us. How far have we evolved beyond the impassioned name-calling of a heated fight in the school playground? You only have to switch on question time in parliament for an embarrassing showing of poor behaviour. These, our elected representatives, to whose salaries we all contribute, routinely waste everyone’s time shouting at each other, mostly getting nowhere.

The prominent feature in my conversation with Andy was listening. We listened to each other. Not with judgement or irritation or interruption. Nor with exasperated eye-rolling (which we can often sense even on an audio call). Instead, we asked each other follow-up questions and for more information, debated, chewed things over. We listened with curiosity and above all respect.

Andy and I have been friends for years. If she thinks differently to me, I want to know why. I respect her intelligence, her attentive, considered approach; she mulls things over and weighs things up, and solidifies her thoughts before speaking.

I follow my gut and have learned through bitter experience to trust it. I seek out alternative viewpoints to those repeated in mainstream media, and test the way each feels in my body. I invest time in building that trust with my body. Our bodies are persistent and devoted communicators. If I listen, I learn a great deal.

Devoting myself to taking an intuitive approach came from various life experiences, one of which was the year I vowed to make all decisions based on following my heart, not my head, to feel the difference. I found following my heart by far the preferable approach. It took a lot of building of trust with myself, but it was the most stress-free way of moving forward. The same can’t be said for the times I ignored my gut and did what I thought I should do, or when I put my presumptions of what may be expected of me before what was truly in my heart to do. I’ve learned to listen to my heart over my head, even when I don’t fully understand the why or how of it all. Clarity follows in its own time, every time, confirming I made the best choice.

Now, this kind of heart-based decision-making, following one’s intuition, is open to being shot down in our world. For the past several thousand years, we have been tipped off balance towards favouring the expression of our masculine aspects – assertiveness, confidence, protection – while consistently devaluing our feminine aspects – intuition, empathy, nurturing. (None of these has a thing to do with sex or gender, but are aspects that reside in each human. It is our choice which of these aspects to express or suppress.) What we are seeing all around us is an imbalance of those masculine aspects within individuals who have discounted their feminine aspects almost all together, transforming the aforementioned and valuable masculine aspects into thwarted, what we now call toxic, versions – assertiveness becomes aggression, confidence becomes arrogance, protection becomes dominance.

Not only have we trained ourselves to accept these behaviours as being the most coveted if we want to be heard or get ahead in this world, but most of us are living under leadership that exemplifies the toxic versions on a regular basis, be it in our workplaces or local, state or federal governments.

We’ve also become accustomed to dismissing entirely those aspects categorised as feminine ones – intuition, empathy, nurturing – which require listening, patience, non-judgement and acceptance. What is often instantly equated with these aspects is weakness and being easy to manipulate, voiceless, worthless, a pushover. These are misinterpretations of the value these aspects bring to our lives, to the point where women as well as men exhibit what we’ve termed toxic masculinity with increasing prevalence – it’s the way they’ve learned to move forward in life, the way to further careers and achieve goals. For everyone around that person, much is painful.

It is balance between our masculine and feminine aspects people are screaming for with increasing volume. But it must begin to happen within ourselves before we can expect major shifts on the global stage. We must take responsibility for our own behaviour before expecting anyone else to change theirs. When was the last time you did a health check on the way you talk to yourself, your colleagues, your loved ones? What do you sound like? Impatient, irritated, outright rude? Respectful, kind, calm?

That year I experimented with following my intuition exclusively did not mean I gave up my level of confidence or logical thinking or assertiveness. Indeed, I observed finding it easier to express those aspects as I felt more balanced by valuing my feminine aspects more.

If someone thinks my approach to life or my opinion is erroneous, that’s their prerogative, but I’m not here to force it on anyone else, nor is it my business if others disagree with me. I adore Andy for listening to me without judging me, and it felt good to offer her an open curious ear.

I also don’t expect Andy to think the same way I do, nor do I have any interest in convincing her to adopt my musings. She is a grown woman with her own free mind. Who am I to set out to influence that?

The time and energy we humans spend trying to convince others – from those in our inner circle of loved ones to complete strangers – to believe the way we do is a waste of our precious and powerful resources, mental, physical, spiritual and emotional.

I find it liberating to come to a conversation with no expectations of what the other participant should say or do. That is their choice. I feel it’s disrespectful to spend time attempting to persuade them of something else. It’s also an exhausting and thoroughly unpleasant pursuit, and frankly, I’d rather read a good book.

Linking someone’s worth to what they think or believe seems futile and ridiculous, too, including our own. We have the freedom to change our thoughts and beliefs as much as we like over our lifetime. Why not encourage each other to strive for our individual best, even if that conflicts with our own approach to life? It does not harm me in the least that Andy believes something different to me. It’s her prerogative as a citizen of the world to formulate her own thoughts. As it is mine, and yours, and your neighbour’s. We are an ever-evolving species. I’m interested in seeing what happens as we bring more and more balance into our own lives and the inevitable flow-on effect that has on our communities.

There is great value in listening that we as a society are only just beginning to explore. Via the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, I received an invitation last year from Senator Jacqui Lambie to put forward my views on whether or not mobile phones should be banned from people in Immigration detention in our country. I responded with my thoughts, as did many hundreds of other Australians. Senator Lambie and her office took the time to read all those responses and collate them, leading her to vote against the ban.

I don’t agree with Senator Lambie on many issues. Yet she stood out by the mere fact of proactively seeking community response to this proposed change of legislation. And it wasn’t just lip service. She genuinely listened and voted as per the majority of constituents’ wishes – this is a remarkable shift in the way a parliamentarian operates and communicates with the electorate. I appreciated very much the opportunity of voicing my thoughts – something I can do any time by contacting local MPs – but I especially appreciated being sought out to provide them.

Placing ourselves in fixed camps of thought is to risk trapping ourselves there without allowing ourselves the flexibility of changing our position. That limitation we impose on ourselves denies the very nature of humans which is to constantly grow and evolve.

One of my favourite features of adulthood is the freedom to reflect on my beliefs and discard those that no longer serve me. As a younger woman, I believed I was fat and ugly and dull as dishwater. Well, that belief wasn’t doing me any good, and so, via plenty of outside help and dedicated inner work, I plucked that weed out of my mind’s garden, freeing up space to grow more nurturing beliefs that led to far less damaging actions. Similarly, if beliefs we operate under within our communities go unchecked or accepted without objective and regular analysis, without being put under the spotlight, it leaves moist the ground for breeding complacency and corruption. Think about that leader at your workplace who treats people dismissively or openly rudely – often, they get away with it because no one speaks to them directly of their unwelcome behaviour. Why don’t they? For fear of being sidelined, ignored, fired. There are many valid reasons, but at what point do we stop accepting poor treatment and start speaking up for ourselves? As essential as it is to our individual health for us to routinely assess the quality of our thoughts and beliefs, and therefore our actions, so too is it for our communities. All of our modus operandi can withstand a little shake-up from time to time. It’s imperative to regularly step out of our comfort zones and analyse our habits to maintain healthy movement forward, just as we turn the soil in our gardens regularly to promote the flow of oxygen and optimise the absorption of nutrients.  

Our capacity to thrive is unlimited. All the problems we humans create, we also have solutions for. There is nothing we cannot do, for better or worse. We know what worse looks like in the human experience. I’m keen to explore the better side.

To that end, I’ve come to realise it’s essential to the health of our communities to have frequent encounters with people with whom we disagree. Encounters that are founded on respect and civility. Hello, I see you and hear you, my fellow human, and I respect your freedom to believe what you will. My ears are open to what you have to say and I thank you for listening to what I have to say.

We have far more in common than what divides us. Many of our cultures’ epic stories share the same themes. The ways of the world as told to my Indian friend by her grandparents are strikingly similar to my Serbian grandparents’ teachings.

At the start of Melbourne’s first lockdown in March 2020, I escaped the city and stayed with my mother in the Upper Hunter Shire of New South Wales. She lives in a town with a population of fewer than a thousand people. When we were able to see others again, we reconnected with her friends. Many of them are not on the same page politically. One friend in particular has a tendency towards political incorrectness and making sweeping generalisations about Indigenous Australians among other cultural groups that make up our rich tapestry of Australians. Mum had been pondering whether or not to maintain the friendship.

My mother’s parents were born in the former Yugoslavia. Her father was a WWII refugee and her mother came to Australia by boat some time later to marry him after he wrote home seeking a woman willing to move to a new country and start a life with him. They were acquaintances from the same village, and went on to build a partnership based on mutual respect, hard work, generosity of spirit and love, and raise four children.

When my mother started school in Sydney’s western suburbs, she didn’t speak English. She went on to raise four children of her own, completed a degree in psychology as a mature age student, and relocated to the country after the last of her children became an adult.

Mum’s friend’s ancestry goes back to the First Fleet’s convicts. Through locating relatives and via research on ancestry websites she pieced together the mysteries of her past. Along the way, long-held family rumours were confirmed, including that there was an Aboriginal woman a few generations back. Mum found it curious that her friend didn’t seem to reflect on her thoughts about Indigenous Australians even after finding she had a First Nations ancestor. Mum didn’t shy away from challenging her friend, providing a counterpoint to her opinions that were mostly informed by commercial television and one particular newspaper publisher.

While she harboured opinions Mum wasn’t a fan of, Mum also acknowledged her friend’s kindness and loyalty. She’s the kind of woman who takes the initiative when she sees there’s work to be done, and comes to someone’s aid in a considerate and practical way, leaving the recipient feeling looked after without having been intruded upon. She’s generous with her time if you need a shoulder to cry on, and accepts gestures of thanks, allowing the balance of giving and receiving most treasured in solid friendships. Mum likes this woman, enjoys her friendship and company, despite their differences of opinion. And they laugh together a lot. While they offer opposing views, they listen to each other and express curiosity and seek to learn more about why the other person thinks the way they do. They can have heated arguments while sharing a pot of tea and homemade scones.

While the two women come from different cultural backgrounds, they also share similar experiences having gone to school in the same decade, and have discovered much other common ground. Each essentially wants the same things: a healthy family, the ability to carve out an independent life with the freedom to choose their next move. From my outsider’s viewpoint, I saw a lot of value in this friendship of two disparate thinkers, from two different cultures, with a great many differences in life experiences and belief systems, and who’d yet found pleasure in each other’s company, comfort in each other’s presence in times of need and health crises, and the lightness of sharing laughter and sparking curiosity about each other. If Mum had cut off her friend, she’d be missing out on all the wonderful things about her. We are each of us much more than our allegiances.

Human communication. We have vast uncharted territory to traverse in this realm, a great many improvements to make in the way we approach each other and speak to and listen to each other.

There is great power in accepting each other for who we are, as there is in allowing ourselves and each other the space to shift our beliefs at the influx of new, better data, or personal experience, or having been witness to a situation that may change our mind about something.

Having lived both ways, being respectful and loving to people is a far more pleasurable experience than getting angry because someone believes things I disagree with, or when they behave differently to how I’ve expected them to.

There is plenty of room on our accommodating Earth for differences of opinion and beliefs. We’re all figuring things out as we go, and compassion is essential, including for our elected representatives who bungle things sometimes.

We don’t have to like each other, but I think it’s imperative we love each other. We are growing alongside each other and always finding better and more effective ways of communicating. I’m intrigued to witness the way our planet shifts as we become better listeners and approach ourselves and each other with growing respect and kindness.

In an episode of a favourite podcast – Hidden Brain, NPR, ‘The Easiest Person to Fool’, 2 February 2021 – host, journalist Shankar Vedantam interviewed psychologist Adam Grant, professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Grant was discussing the impact of disagreeing in the context of working relationships in Silicon Valley companies, and how conflict impacts the ultimate success or failure of teams. While his focus was on relationships and interactions with colleagues, I think there is a lot to learn from the researchers’ findings he summarises, insights that apply to other kinds of relationships.

“The mistake that a lot of people make is they assume that less conflict is better; that, if you want to build a successful collaboration or a great team, then you want to minimise the amount of tension you have. But, as some researchers have argued based on a lot of evidence, the absence of conflict is not harmony, it’s apathy. If you’re in a group where people never disagree, the only way that could really happen is if people don’t care enough to speak their minds.

“And so, in order to get to wise decisions, creative solutions, we need to hear a variety of perspectives, we need diversity of thought. … one of the ways that we get there [is] by saying, ‘You know what? I think we actually don’t agree on what the vision for our company should be or what our strategy should be or how to design this product, and so let’s hash that out.’ And I don’t think we do that enough.”

Grant goes on to say that “when a disagreement becomes personal, everything that gets raised by the other person is interpreted in the most negative light possible. … people sometimes don’t even hear the substance of the idea because they’re so invested in defending their ego or in proving the other person wrong.”

Nothing much of value comes from the latter type of disagreement. It’s much more interesting and satisfying to leave the ego at the door, accept that there are many different ways of looking at the same thing, and get stuck into a hearty debate with respect and curiosity leading the way forward.

It’s okay if you disagree with me; I still love you.