We’re all bundles of complexity, right?

You love scary movies but you won’t go on roller coasters.

You are a vegetarian but you wear leather.

You buy local, but you shop at Wal Mart.

You consider yourself a person of faith, but you don’t attend church.

You are pro-choice, but would never have an abortion.

Yeah, sh*t just got real, right?

Here’s the thing, there has been a whole lot of finger pointing and belief slamming on both sides of the political fence. I think that some of my debate-tirades on twitter have probably falling squarely into the “not-very-open-minded” category. I get that we all get fired up. We can and we should cultivate opinion, because we have the freedom to do so. Other people, and in my case I will say, other women, have starkly different circumstances.

I wish that it wasn’t a political fence. I wish that people didn’t feel that there was no middle ground between using every last breath to talk over people with different views or keep their views completely private. It got me to thinking, what if we tweaked our perspective, man/woman, gay/straight, left/right whatever. What if we all aproached it from a “How I am” rather than a “Who I am.”

I saw a tweet from @momagenda that sparked this whole thing. Is it possible to diffuse politics and hate and get back tot he simplicity of saying that everyone deserves to be loved and treated kindly?

I’m sure you’ve seen the thing circling on Facebook and blogs about the children about the children from an African tribe (Thanks to Tara S. for this and for so often advocating for hearing both sides)—

“An anthropologist proposed a game to children in an African tribe. He put a basket full of fruit near a tree and told the children that whoever got there first won the sweet fruits.

When he told them to run, they all took each others hands and ran together, then sat together enjoying their treats.

When he asked them why they had run like that when one could have had all the fruits for himself, they said, ‘UBUNTU, how can one of us be happy if all the other ones are sad?’ (‘UBUNTU’ in the Xhosa culture means: ‘I am because we are.)”

Is it possible to separate people from viewpoints and worry less about who people are and more about how we coexist? I am as passionate as the next person, but I am tired of the who so often dictating the how.

How about we try together?