Palm Frond

“We don’t believe what we see. We see what we believe.” – Kelly Corrigan, a takeaway from her discussion with Mónica Guzmán

Mónica Guzmán is a journalist who wrote I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times. Guzmán describes herself as a lifelong liberal from Seattle who has parents who were once Mexican immigrants, who now happen to be fierce Trump supporters. Guzmán wrote this book in 2022. I just downloaded it to my Kindle. I imagine that an election year is as good a year as any, to read a book like this.

The only time that real, lasting changes occur anywhere, is when people change their minds. Real changes only occur when people examine their beliefs and find loopholes and pitfalls and questions where there used to be ironclad answers. Sometimes it takes extreme events in our lives to allow ourselves to fully and openly examine our own beliefs.

The other day, I was driving on the road and up in the distance was a blondish hump lying in the middle of the road. I instantly felt sick to my stomach. “It’s a dead animal,” I thought. “It’s roadkill.” Then my imagination really got to the best of me. “It’s probably a dead dog.” And due to the size and the color of the mass on the road, it was most likely a golden retriever. Someone’s beloved family dog, their gorgeous golden retriever, had been left in the middle of the road to die by some horrible jerk! I was sick to my stomach. I had tears in my eyes. And then as I got closer, I saw that it was a large palm frond that had probably been blown down in one of the storms we have been having. Yes, what I saw up ahead on the road was a palm frond all along. “We see what we believe.”

Sometimes just knowing why someone believes what they believe, helps us to gain empathy and understanding, even if we don’t share their beliefs. Sometimes exploring why we, ourselves, believe what we believe, helps us to gain empathy and understanding about ourselves. How many times do we watch a movie and a character has an extreme reaction to a situation, and just as we are scratching our heads, wondering about their over-the-top reaction, we get a flashback to the backstory of what most likely caused that character’s extreme reaction in the present time? Sometimes our beliefs come from irrational, exaggerated places in the dark corners of our minds that stem from extreme experiences, or frightening people who did not allow us to disagree.

In a divisive year, in a divisive time in our country, there is no better time to figure out how to feel better. The only way to figure out how to feel better about anything, especially troubling things, is to explore these situations with open-minded curiosity, and with the aim of finding some kind of understanding. I am hoping that Guzmán’s book has some good ideas about how to do this, because our current system of dueling parties, extreme media platforms, and people screaming at, and denigrating each other on social media, is getting us nowhere and has been getting us nowhere, for a long, long time.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

2268. What is your favorite conversation topic?