[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]
I’m the kind of neighbor that delivers
pies door-to-door and rallies people for
Park cleanups and organizes block
parties I love connecting with people
and I’ve worked really hard to build
strong relationships all across my
neighborhood but something happened this
last fall that caused me to call into
question some of the goodwill that I
thought that I had built a few days
after the election I posted something on
Facebook reflecting my own political
position and in among some fairly
hostile comments from strangers one
really caught my attention and piled
onto the others and mocked me called me
names and accused me of some things that
just weren’t true and what really stood
out about this one was that the woman
who wrote it lives just a block away
from me we had worked together on a
number of neighborhood projects we’ve
eaten together and laugh together and
shopped each other’s garage sales and
there was nothing in our real-life
experience that could explain the way
that she apparently felt about me now
reading it was so bewildering it was
like a friend had just dumped hot
garbage on my head and then walked away
and I was struck with the fact that this
trusting community that I was trying to
build was just a farce if the moment
that we were outed as being on the other
team all of a sudden our block parties
and Park cleanups just fell apart my
politics are an important part of who I
am they’re the way that my values get
translated into real life and I didn’t
want to have to hide that from houses my
neighborhood or passive-aggressively
tiptoe around them I wanted a place
where read people and blue people could
talk openly and honestly and with
conviction about these things but at the
same time with gentleness to each other
I wanted kind of a purple place so I
reached out to her to grab a cup of
coffee and when I didn’t hear back right
away with nobody else to talk to you I
did the only obvious thing I invited a
thousand people to dinner for real
I posted on our neighbourhood forum an
open invitation to come talk politics so
about 40 people responded some were
excited some were curious one woman sent
me a clip of a movie from the 80s where
people talked politics over dinner and
then there’s a murder at the end so a
lot of feelings out but I organized this
into smaller groups that reflected a
cross-section of the neighborhood so
when we gathered for that first potluck
around our table we had a retired
steelworker and his wife a mixed-race
gay couple in their 20s an evangelical
home school mom a white doctor who
worked with with Latino immigrants and a
gentleman in his 70s who was both part
of the Tea Party movement and Occupy
Wall Street so after some initial
introductions and some passing of
casseroles we got right into it and it
took me about an hour to figure out why
this conversation was such a total train
wreck and then another hour for it to
become something really powerful for
that first hour we sat there just
lobbing talking points back and forth
like we had little cable news pundits
just feeding us our lines and it was
somehow both abusive and really boring
at the same time like like we were a
bunch of kind of disinterested medieval
soldiers half-heartedly chucking flaming
Spears at each other across a swamp and
I realized that this conversation was
just not gonna go anywhere
until we could move it from this game of
mental ping-pong to something much more
substantial so every time that someone
put out a political position I started
to ask what is it that you want to be in
the world that you feel like you’re not
seeing now that you hope that this
position can help bring to reality in
other words what’s the world that you
long to live in that you want to help
create and it still took asking that
question five or six different ways but
we started to move to something deeper
and I remember really vividly the moment
that one neighbor after wrestling
through his talking points finally said
in exasperation I just want us to take
care of each other in the places where
the fabric of family and society have
been damaged so we can
break these destructive cycles and there
was a pause as the neighbor across the
aisle said yeah that’s exactly what I
want too so at these conversations
continued I started to get really
excited with what was happening and I
decided to take this experiment beyond
the dinners so I started looking for
these conversations everywhere at the
supermarket at the gas station with
Airbnb guests with unsuspecting
missionaries showing up at my door
nobody was safe but I was so enjoying it
and I was learning it learning and being
challenged so much but the problem was
that the more of these conversations I
had the angrier and angrier I found
myself becoming spending a lot of time
talking to myself over the dishes like
why am I the only one asking questions
here I’m being humbly open to change and
these jerks are leaving with their dumb
ideas totally intact
I was working so hard to be a bridge
builder but I felt like I was biting my
tongue about things that were really
important to me I felt like not only was
I betraying my own values but I was
abandoning people that were counting on
me to say something and my gentleness
and empathy started to feel like a moral
failure and I found myself either
silently seething or lashing out in
righteous fury I realized I had to go
back and figure out the recipe for
creating a really genuinely open space
for them genuinely open that I could
also authentically live in so I went
back and realized that there were three
things that I had to commit to the first
one surprise them with safety we come to
these conversations armed and ready for
battle but I realized that every time
that I picked up my own sphere of
sarcasm or self defense or cold
shouldering all it meant was that they
held on to theirs even tighter I
realized in my own life that I have
never changed in any good way by being
lectured or humiliated I’ve changed by
discovering that a person that I thought
was dangerous was really safe and
welcoming and when I discovered that
they weren’t going to destroy everything
that I cared about it was a lot more
open to dipping and exploratory toe into
new water so I realized that I had to
let go of the need to defend myself or
fix their thinking or change them at all
I had to lay down my spears and armor
and Surprise them with safety well that
made it possible to then move to the
next commitment which was to move to the
heart one neighbor told me that he
thought we should keep emotion out of
politics let’s just be logical he said
the problem is it’s all emotion whether
it’s abortion or immigration or the debt
ceiling we only care about these things
because they touch on stuff that’s far
more important to us and our
conversations our dinners only started
to become something transformational
when we started asking questions that
required us to answer not from the head
but from the gut questions
about fear and hope and loss and longing
and moving to those deeper places open
the door for us to do the third
commitment which is to co-create with
conviction another neighbor told me that
he didn’t think you could expect people
to be open to change
you could only expect them to engage in
dialogue but I think that those are the
same thing
because dialogue is not a game of tennis
where somebody wins and somebody loses
dialogue is an effort to create
something new it’s a bunch of people
bringing different colors and shapes
shaped blocks to a table and discovering
what they can build together that they
couldn’t have built separately it’s a
lot easier to do that at a dinner when
you’ve got lots of different
perspectives on the table it’s harder
one-on-one to not feel like an
escalating debate but I discovered that
I could commit to that attitude of
co-creation then I could offer my
contradictory idea not as a weapon but
as a gift that we both needed and it
freed me from the tension of feeling
like I had to choose between kindness or
conviction I could do both and in the
best moments that co-creation didn’t
lead us to some perfect magical solution
but it took us to a moment of confusion
where we both realized that maybe we saw
the value and validity on the other side
and that while we might have to
prioritize and advocate for one over the
other
we could still actively support and work
for the other value – again it could be
both but you can’t get to those shared
values until you move to the heart you
can’t move to the heart until you make
it safe so as I started to practice
build the muscle of surprising them with
safety moving to the heart and
co-creating with conviction my
conversations got better I started to
see more trust and openness emerge but
it was still hit and miss I still bombed
it royally and then sometimes I do
everything perfectly and the other
person could not meet me there and that
was really frustrating but that’s
reality that there may not be recipe
there may not be mutual openness because
openness is not normal normal is closed
it is a lot safer a lot more comfortable
to surround yourself with a cocoon of
agreement or to defend your position and
pitch your Spears from behind a wall or
to just disengage and check out openness
requires effort and it is painful
because when you choose to lay down your
weapon and step into the middle of a
battlefield you open yourself to a lot
of hurt and in some relationships and
for some who’s been hurt it’s not a good
idea but if you like me feel like our
civic life depends on us finding a
better way to be together then I think
it’s worth continuing to try because
purple places do not require just a
ceasefire between red and blue they need
people who are committed to staying open
to stepping into the middle and even
when it hard when even when it’s hard
being purple thank you
[Applause]
[Music]
[Applause]
I’m the kind of neighbor that delivers
pies door-to-door and rallies people for
Park cleanups and organizes block
parties I love connecting with people
and I’ve worked really hard to build
strong relationships all across my
neighborhood but something happened this
last fall that caused me to call into
question some of the goodwill that I
thought that I had built a few days
after the election I posted something on
Facebook reflecting my own political
position and in among some fairly
hostile comments from strangers one
really caught my attention and piled
onto the others and mocked me called me
names and accused me of some things that
just weren’t true and what really stood
out about this one was that the woman
who wrote it lives just a block away
from me we had worked together on a
number of neighborhood projects we’ve
eaten together and laugh together and
shopped each other’s garage sales and
there was nothing in our real-life
experience that could explain the way
that she apparently felt about me now
reading it was so bewildering it was
like a friend had just dumped hot
garbage on my head and then walked away
and I was struck with the fact that this
trusting community that I was trying to
build was just a farce if the moment
that we were outed as being on the other
team all of a sudden our block parties
and Park cleanups just fell apart my
politics are an important part of who I
am they’re the way that my values get
translated into real life and I didn’t
want to have to hide that from houses my
neighborhood or passive-aggressively
tiptoe around them I wanted a place
where read people and blue people could
talk openly and honestly and with
conviction about these things but at the
same time with gentleness to each other
I wanted kind of a purple place so I
reached out to her to grab a cup of
coffee and when I didn’t hear back right
away with nobody else to talk to you I
did the only obvious thing I invited a
thousand people to dinner for real
I posted on our neighbourhood forum an
open invitation to come talk politics so
about 40 people responded some were
excited some were curious one woman sent
me a clip of a movie from the 80s where
people talked politics over dinner and
then there’s a murder at the end so a
lot of feelings out but I organized this
into smaller groups that reflected a
cross-section of the neighborhood so
when we gathered for that first potluck
around our table we had a retired
steelworker and his wife a mixed-race
gay couple in their 20s an evangelical
home school mom a white doctor who
worked with with Latino immigrants and a
gentleman in his 70s who was both part
of the Tea Party movement and Occupy
Wall Street so after some initial
introductions and some passing of
casseroles we got right into it and it
took me about an hour to figure out why
this conversation was such a total train
wreck and then another hour for it to
become something really powerful for
that first hour we sat there just
lobbing talking points back and forth
like we had little cable news pundits
just feeding us our lines and it was
somehow both abusive and really boring
at the same time like like we were a
bunch of kind of disinterested medieval
soldiers half-heartedly chucking flaming
Spears at each other across a swamp and
I realized that this conversation was
just not gonna go anywhere
until we could move it from this game of
mental ping-pong to something much more
substantial so every time that someone
put out a political position I started
to ask what is it that you want to be in
the world that you feel like you’re not
seeing now that you hope that this
position can help bring to reality in
other words what’s the world that you
long to live in that you want to help
create and it still took asking that
question five or six different ways but
we started to move to something deeper
and I remember really vividly the moment
that one neighbor after wrestling
through his talking points finally said
in exasperation I just want us to take
care of each other in the places where
the fabric of family and society have
been damaged so we can
break these destructive cycles and there
was a pause as the neighbor across the
aisle said yeah that’s exactly what I
want too so at these conversations
continued I started to get really
excited with what was happening and I
decided to take this experiment beyond
the dinners so I started looking for
these conversations everywhere at the
supermarket at the gas station with
Airbnb guests with unsuspecting
missionaries showing up at my door
nobody was safe but I was so enjoying it
and I was learning it learning and being
challenged so much but the problem was
that the more of these conversations I
had the angrier and angrier I found
myself becoming spending a lot of time
talking to myself over the dishes like
why am I the only one asking questions
here I’m being humbly open to change and
these jerks are leaving with their dumb
ideas totally intact
I was working so hard to be a bridge
builder but I felt like I was biting my
tongue about things that were really
important to me I felt like not only was
I betraying my own values but I was
abandoning people that were counting on
me to say something and my gentleness
and empathy started to feel like a moral
failure and I found myself either
silently seething or lashing out in
righteous fury I realized I had to go
back and figure out the recipe for
creating a really genuinely open space
for them genuinely open that I could
also authentically live in so I went
back and realized that there were three
things that I had to commit to the first
one surprise them with safety we come to
these conversations armed and ready for
battle but I realized that every time
that I picked up my own sphere of
sarcasm or self defense or cold
shouldering all it meant was that they
held on to theirs even tighter I
realized in my own life that I have
never changed in any good way by being
lectured or humiliated I’ve changed by
discovering that a person that I thought
was dangerous was really safe and
welcoming and when I discovered that
they weren’t going to destroy everything
that I cared about it was a lot more
open to dipping and exploratory toe into
new water so I realized that I had to
let go of the need to defend myself or
fix their thinking or change them at all
I had to lay down my spears and armor
and Surprise them with safety well that
made it possible to then move to the
next commitment which was to move to the
heart one neighbor told me that he
thought we should keep emotion out of
politics let’s just be logical he said
the problem is it’s all emotion whether
it’s abortion or immigration or the debt
ceiling we only care about these things
because they touch on stuff that’s far
more important to us and our
conversations our dinners only started
to become something transformational
when we started asking questions that
required us to answer not from the head
but from the gut questions
about fear and hope and loss and longing
and moving to those deeper places open
the door for us to do the third
commitment which is to co-create with
conviction another neighbor told me that
he didn’t think you could expect people
to be open to change
you could only expect them to engage in
dialogue but I think that those are the
same thing
because dialogue is not a game of tennis
where somebody wins and somebody loses
dialogue is an effort to create
something new it’s a bunch of people
bringing different colors and shapes
shaped blocks to a table and discovering
what they can build together that they
couldn’t have built separately it’s a
lot easier to do that at a dinner when
you’ve got lots of different
perspectives on the table it’s harder
one-on-one to not feel like an
escalating debate but I discovered that
I could commit to that attitude of
co-creation then I could offer my
contradictory idea not as a weapon but
as a gift that we both needed and it
freed me from the tension of feeling
like I had to choose between kindness or
conviction I could do both and in the
best moments that co-creation didn’t
lead us to some perfect magical solution
but it took us to a moment of confusion
where we both realized that maybe we saw
the value and validity on the other side
and that while we might have to
prioritize and advocate for one over the
other
we could still actively support and work
for the other value – again it could be
both but you can’t get to those shared
values until you move to the heart you
can’t move to the heart until you make
it safe so as I started to practice
build the muscle of surprising them with
safety moving to the heart and
co-creating with conviction my
conversations got better I started to
see more trust and openness emerge but
it was still hit and miss I still bombed
it royally and then sometimes I do
everything perfectly and the other
person could not meet me there and that
was really frustrating but that’s
reality that there may not be recipe
there may not be mutual openness because
openness is not normal normal is closed
it is a lot safer a lot more comfortable
to surround yourself with a cocoon of
agreement or to defend your position and
pitch your Spears from behind a wall or
to just disengage and check out openness
requires effort and it is painful
because when you choose to lay down your
weapon and step into the middle of a
battlefield you open yourself to a lot
of hurt and in some relationships and
for some who’s been hurt it’s not a good
idea but if you like me feel like our
civic life depends on us finding a
better way to be together then I think
it’s worth continuing to try because
purple places do not require just a
ceasefire between red and blue they need
people who are committed to staying open
to stepping into the middle and even
when it hard when even when it’s hard
being purple thank you
[Applause]
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