The other day I saw someone post on social media that if their friends had a certain opinion, they should "unfriend" themselves from their social media account. That made me sad and left me feeling a bit hopeless about the future of humanity.
Ask any educated person and you will know that excellence, progress, or whatever you want to call it, is not gained from everyone agreeing. I don’t mean educated in the formally-educated sense only. My third-grade educated mom always says: “The things that bother you the most about other people are probably things you need to work on in yourself.”
The person who posted the “agree with me or we are not friends” post could have said “I refuse to debate this issue, so if you make a comment disagreeing with me, I will remove it, because this is my page and my platform.”
Or, “If you comment or post with a different opinion, I won’t discuss it.” Or, they could have said “I don’t know enough about my opinion to argue in favour of it, so I don’t want to talk about it.”
But they didn’t.
I have respect for this person, but I can’t help but wonder how they got it so wrong. Where did they learn that friendships or relationships can only exist if they agree on everything? That’s not friendship, and certainly not a relationship, unless you consider being part of a fan club means you have a relationship with the celebrity.
This post bothered me so much that a few days later I posted, in a sort of passive-aggressive way, hoping to encourage people to think differently about differences of opinion:
“If you think COVID is going to kill us all, if you think COVID is a scam, if you think Trudeau is great, if you think he is horrible, if you think there is a God, or if you are an atheist, or of you are anywhere in between, and if you disagree with lots of what I post: thank you for being my friend. I have learned so much from my friends, and especially from those who disagree with me. It is not easy to disagree, so thank you for being willing to be uncomfortable. Each of you add to my life. Thank you.”
I was very pleased at the positive response I got from both my conservative and liberal friends. That made me more hopeful for the future of humanity than what watching or reading the news would make me.
Thinking about this in light of my mom’s saying makes me wonder how well I tolerate narrow-minded people. My first impulse is I would rather not tolerate them, I would rather dismiss them, but I suspect they have much to teach me about stuff I don’t want to know about myself.
At least, that’s what my mom would say.
