A great irony of so-called Modern Life is that the loudest voices are often the most divisive. The modern media has recognized that what gets the most passionate responses from people are often the most polarized opinions. Whether those responses are filled with love or hate, the media feels it is winning when it is inspiring people to FEEL SOMETHING. And as people withdraw more and more into their own lives, because technology has allowed people to get everything delivered to their door, delivered via the push of a button, Netflix 24/7, it is harder for the media to get anyone’s attention.
We go into the holidays knowing that while there are mass shootings regularly now, some of us firmly believe in gun ownership and some of us think very differently. Stark differences of opinion inspire anger and sometimes hatred even in the same family.
We go into the holidays with some people believing in God,some people believing there is no God, and some people not sure. Meanwhile, the short time family members are together does not allow for what I would call reflection. People who MAY barely see each other are thrown together at the dinner table.
We all go into the holidays knowing we face situations where we have drastically different opinions on things like religion, gun ownership, ETC. How do we handle sitting at the dinner table,or sitting fireside with people we know may feel like foreigners to us?
I have learned as a parent to teach my children that they need to think of life, and of how to deal with difficult situations, as if they are in a lifeboat, stranded in the middle of an ocean, with sharks circling,and resources quite low. Ironically, it is often only in severely life-threatening or traumatizing situations that humans forget their differences and bond together.
That may be why people who have fought wars together, have the deepest bonds. They have incurred the most severe and most frequent “trauma bonding”. The rest of us live easy, soft, overly-protected, coddled, and now more and more introverted and antisocial lives. This may be a reason why the World War II generation is called one of the greatest generations, as they fought AND DIED for a common cause, and this brought a whole generation together. I am sure that when those who fought together in war sat down at a dinner table, no matter how long it had been since they last saw each other, religious or political differences seem too minute compared to similarities.
As you go into the holidays, I encourage you to realize that if you think about yourself and your group as stuck on a lifeboat, you may suddenly realize there are a lot of similarities you share, and a lot of common beliefs you can discuss.
There are always going to be conflicts and rivalries in families. For parents, teach your children to focus on the importance of finding the similarities, shared beliefs, common passions, and even fun that can be derived from keeping conversation to what we share.
This is not to say we should shy away from debates about beliefs, but if we know it will not be so much of a debate but rather an argument that will go nowhere, why not focus energy into areas where we can build new bridges.
The best holidays help remind us of our Humanity, our ability to look beyond our own beliefs, our ability to find Common Ground.
And finally, one more point that gets lost in the holidays: practice behaving, and teach your children to behave, as if the most important thing is not what you say you believe, not what religion you claim to be part of, but how you actually behave and treat people. Because in the end,you will not be known by what you say or what your beliefs are, but how you actually behave around people.
Behavior, not beliefs, tell everyone else who we really are, underneath it all.
And for all of us,the holidays give us the chance to see people we have not seen for a long time – and in saying that – the holidays give us the chance to focus on correcting problematic behavior, and showing those around us how much we have matured.