“Today, especially in an election year but pretty much always, we live inside the equivalent of a political snow globe that is being relentlessly shaken by a deranged child.”
- Shane Ryan, in Golf Digest’s online edition from Friday, November 1, 2024
Ryan is laugh-out-loud funny 90% of the time and never more amusing than on this fairly weighty topic. On Tuesday, hopefully, every registered voter will either head to the polls or have their early ballot counted, and then, sometime in the next who-knows-how-long, we’ll have a result and move on. This post ain’t about the election, though.
It’s about when, where, and how we engage in dialogue. And the golf course, Ryan hilariously points out, ain’t the place for political dialogue.
Speaking of dialogue, too little in our life involves dialogue anymore. Dictionary.com defines dialogue (partly) as a “conversation between two or more people…” We’ve come to live in monologue times. We’ve come to live in the-fastest-thumb or nastiest-quote-Tweet gets the most attention times. As Shane so hilariously implies, “Who gave the deranged child our snow globe and why won’t this kid quit shaking it?”
Last week, we touched on ideas as the currency of Difference-Makers. How can we return ideas to the head of the line and engage in productive dialogue? How can we listen seeking to understand versus listen to retort? How can we come into contact with, enjoy, and get to know people who aren’t just like us? Urban, suburban, rural — they’re out there, and how much will it improve our worldview if we get to know them, how they feel, and what they think instead of just supposing they’re idiots?
How? We can decide to. Once we decide, we can act on it. Once we act on it, we can consider what we heard. We can ask questions to understand better. We can (shocker alert) alter our position based on our learning. Or not. Either way, we walk away smarter, with a broader network and a more complete picture of the world in which we live, which is made up of many people not just like us.
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