Why is truly connecting with others and listening to them a radical idea?

Guest Writer: Eliana Riemer (’26)

With all that is going on in America today, it is so easy to get lost in the weeds— deciphering the contradictory messages in the media, and deciding whose interpretations of policy changes to trust. Whose voices are speaking the loudest, whose voices are not being heard, and where the truth lies in the midst of all this chaos. It feels like there are forces at play that I cannot begin to understand. People are saying many things, but they are not talking to each other. More than that, people have forgotten what it’s like to connect with each other, in the real world, without a screen mediating and moderating our interactions for us. People have forgotten that it’s an option simply to listen. To sit there, and not say anything, while we truly pay attention to what people are trying to communicate.

Why is truly connecting with others and listening to them a radical idea? Why have we instituted trainings, workshops, classes, and programs to teach people how to interact with others in a sensitive and effective way? When was it that we became desensitized? When did we agree that it’s ok to see the suffering of others across the world and not care? Why is it that we are inundated with the pictures, information, and narratives of conflicts that are surely on the horizon, conflicts that are currently happening, and conflicts of the past that point to how we got where we are today? Why have we forgotten that we are not people who were built for conflict? Why are the paths we try to pave towards community so difficult to follow? 

We are all in this together. We share one planet. Life is a struggle, and it can feel like there is a very finite and constricting amount of resources. The instinctive blaming of people we can “other” is an understandable reflex. This is not the way forward, though. How do we find ways to connect with the humanity of the people around us? We must realize that community for some need not preclude community for others. We must see each other first and foremost as beings who are sacred because we are alive. And that is enough.

Sharing is difficult— sharing a house, food, and resources we are told are scarce. We feel the instinct that in order for us to provide for ourselves, we must preclude someone else from providing for their people because surely the resources are scarce. Political scientist Ashley Jardina posits that “white identity–or white people’s sense of their own group identity– increased when they felt their group was losing status.” The emphasis on in-group versus out-group tension makes it all the more difficult to envision community interactions that are not part of some great zero-sum game. We must realize there is more to life than a fight for the top of the social status ladder. To develop enough security, enough rootedness within ourselves and within our worldviews to be insulated, even the tiniest bit, from the terror that the idea of scarcity produces within us. Is there a way to get past this? Can we see the sacredness not only of the lives of the people who look and think like us, but also the sacredness of those who don’t? How can we understand people are built for community? Throughout history, people have done better while sharing resources, while in a community with other people. Individualism is a lie.

Many of the battles being waged at the highest levels of our government make more sense when we see the promises that are being made. We will ensure the safety of you and your family. We will prioritize the well-being of people who look a certain way. We will restore this nation to the ephemeral ideal of the ‘American Dream.’ The appeal is the assurance that we will deal with scarcity in a certain way, and that way is this: We will make sure this country comes through this on top. We will hold more power than anyone else, we will have the biggest stick. We are doing this for you. For your families. So that you can keep on keeping on with the status quo. Because obviously, the status quo is the thing that we must preserve. Heaven forbid people hold threatening new ideas that look, from the outside, to be in the best interests of only people who are not the ‘ideal’.

I have hope that even in the worst of circumstances, people are resilient. Along with the potential to do great evil, we hold the potential to do great good. A professor told me recently, “I have no answers. Just existential questions.” We must be missing something. I don’t think the way forward is easy, and I’m not asking for a magical easy road that we can all happily walk down into the sunset. I just think we need some radical reshuffling of our ways of being. People are very scared of dealing with existential questions. We distract ourselves to the point of exhaustion in an effort to not deal with them, then wonder why we feel so strained.

It is time to start working through these questions. The pressure and tension within our communities is building, from the government level to the interpersonal level. The question of “how did this nation become so broken” should be paired with “how does this government reflect our collective values as a nation.” How did we come to build these collective values, and how do we find the space we need to deconstruct the ways these values have led to structural violence over the years? We need to grapple with how we perceive the humanity of others, how that affects our decisions, and how our decisions affect our communities.

What might it look like for us to engage with people from a place of love and grace, rather than a place of fear and scarcity? To find a path forward, we must develop the ability to see others first and foremost through the lens of the sacredness of life.

(Featured image source: rawpixel)