A teacher friend and I were talking about her job recently, and she mentioned the possibility of changing the release time for the younger grades to correspond with the older kids, from 2:15 to 3 p.m. This way all students would be done at the same time and parents would just have one pick up time and buses would just have one route, which seemed like an obvious way to streamline the day. Of course, she agreed that it would be easier for parents picking up their kids so they wouldn’t have to run home, turn around, and come right back or wait in the parking lot for 45 minutes. But she pointed out that that’s the time students who are lagging a bit get individual attention; those extra 45 minutes are invaluable in helping them keep up with the class. Something I hadn’t considered.
When I was in high school I took a fascinating class called Male-Female Roles. This was the 80s in California, so it was a course ahead of its time. I can’t imagine what the syllabus today would look like. At one point we had a discussion about abortion and our teacher had us raise our hands as to which side of the debate we aligned ourselves with. As expected, I was the only one who was pro-life; all my other classmates were pro-choice. But our wise teacher directed us to write a persuasive paper taking the opposite side of the argument. Which I’m sure irked a few students because as teenagers we tend to be pretty rigid. I don’t know about the others, but that exercise has stuck with me all these years.
It’s just kind of interesting to note that even when we’re certain about our position, it’s not always as straightforward as we’d like to think. We may think we’ve already taken a stance: year-round school vs. traditional schedule, immunize or not, climate change or just nature taking its course. I think we all want to choose one side quickly and cleanly so we don't really have to think about each issue on its own. Politics is an obvious example of this. A simple choice assigning you a side on all sorts of issues. By choosing once, you never have to really think about the individual concerns other than, What do my people think about that? But as we know from our personal life experience, if the issues facing our nation were as simple as all that, they’d be solved by now. What we don’t want to acknowledge is the fact that it’s all very complicated. There are consequences attached to every decision, and since there are so many ways to look at an issue, we need to consider viewpoints we hadn’t thought of. We tend to be lazy and want to over-simplify our world. But I’m seeing the older we get, the more we are hopefully understanding that it’s just not that clear-cut.
The more I gather information and talk with friends and try to see where they’re coming from and open my mind to another way of thinking, the more I can see beyond my initial conclusions. I may not convert to their side, but I like becoming more educated on issues I’ve only thought about from one angle. Even if I disagree, I appreciate understanding where they’re coming from; it almost always makes a lot of sense.
To be clear, I (and probably all of us) have some viewpoints we’re not willing to wiggle on. But even on an issue like abortion where I’d emphatically declare myself pro-life, it’s still not entirely black and white; there are so many factors to consider on an individual basis. So yes, pro-life. But not at all costs.
I’m also all-in when it comes to immunizations, an issue most are pretty one-sided on. But I wonder if we can adjust the schedule a bit, start a little later, spread them out, not do so many at once. I was talking with a girlfriend about the HPV immunization just the other day in fact. I’d been vacillating on this for years and finally decided to go ahead and start it with my kids. We were visiting the very afternoon after I’d taken my son to get his started, and she told me she decided not to. It’s only been around 20 years (which my doctor friends seem to think is a significant length of time), where are those kids who had it? How are they doing? She’s had an abnormal pap smear; things turned out ok. I just told her I have no idea what the future holds for my kids and so I weighed it all out in my mind and just went with my best decision, hopefully shielding them from a preventable problem down the road. And she did the same, trying to protect them from an immunization that in her mind is fairly new. Interesting. We both had the same intent: keeping our kids safe and healthy. We were just coming at it from different angles. Loved hearing her perspective.
While my heart is decidedly aligned with my religious choices, the more I learn about Christ, the more open I become about religion in general. I feel strongly that there are many, many ways to live well and to be “spiritual.” I wholeheartedly welcome religious conversation. Rather than desiring to share my leanings to “convert” others to my way of thinking, I’m genuinely interested in what my friends believe and how they see religion working (or not working) in their lives. It warms my heart when friends I love trust me with sensitive feelings. I especially love it when we can laugh at ourselves and our differences.
I always thought college was the best after-high school next-step, but I can see the merit in traveling or working for a year, in taking a technical route, in becoming an entrepreneur. I held tight to my paper-scripture stance for years until I started listening to the advantages of having our devices with us in church, and now I’m convinced of their merits. I thought kids should limit their work in high school and spend the bulk of their discretionary time in extra-curricular activities until I paid attention to what my husband was saying; now I believe having a job is one of the most valuable high school experiences kids can have. I was certain we were right when it came to phones and our kids. Until we started really listening to them and talking together.
I’ve mentioned the Ted talk before, Take “the Other” to Lunch, a promising way to get inside the minds of those we care about but initially disagree with. While doing nothing to promote our own agenda, we simply listen to a different opinion. Love.
I have found the older I get, the reality of there being two or more valid sides to many issues resonates with me. We’re limited only by our stubbornness, not by the paradigms we grew up with. Of course, we all cling to some basic core values, but we have nothing to lose by listening to another perspective and admitting we may even learn something in doing so.
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