I Disagree

When I look around today, I have to admit we live in a selfish world. I don't want to admit that. I see the good. But we are regrettably headed towards a self-serving, narcissistic mess of human kind. In a world-wide culture of "me-ness", it seems that kindness, common courtesy, tolerance and love towards one another are being left behind for the one. And the one uses any means necessary to justify this way of life.

I was discussing this with my 16 year old who is a wise and even ancient soul. I wish everyone could see life through her eyes. I think it would change the world. I know she can change the world, if only a little bit at a time. She was telling me that she has a group of friends who have made drastically different choices from hers, but they are people she still loves and she *respects their right to make choices*. She is kind to them even though she doesn't agree with their choices. And they love her for it. They don't scream "discrimination" because she doesn't agree with them. They are all grateful that they can disagree and still have a friendship. This skill is so rare yet extremely necessary in the current world. It seems that as soon as someone expresses disagreement with anyone in our culture today, discrimination is brought into the conversation, and things quickly go downhill from there. In other words, if you don't agree with me, I am going to call you names and throw accusations at you. I want YOU to agree with my perspective but I am not going to give you that same courtesy. Or even acknowledge that we are different , and it should be okay that we have different views on things.

Disagree means:

disagree/ˌdɪsəˈɡriː/ 

verb -grees, -greeing, -greed (intransitive) often foll by with

1. to dissent in opinion (from another person) or dispute (about an idea, fact, etc)

2. to fail to correspond; conflict

3. to be unacceptable (to) or unfavourable (for); be incompatible (with): curry disagrees with me 

4. to be opposed (to) in principle

 

Discriminate means:

discriminate verb (dɪˈskrɪmɪˌneɪt)

1. (intransitive; usually foll by in favour of or against) to single out a particular person, group, etc, for special favour or, esp, disfavour, often because of a characteristic such as race, colour, sex, intelligence, etc

2. when intr, foll by between or among. to recognize or understand the difference (between); distinguish

 

THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THINGS. I can disagree with your opinion, lifestyle, standards, morals, fashions, tastes, or views on anything and still not discriminate against you. I can even love you even though we view things differently. In fact, we can even be kind to each other!

 

 

 

Now how about that? Can you imagine how wonderful life could be if we could just agree to disagree? You're welcome.