sit beside, seek to understand, and do

Our wired-for-safety and comfort brain and the divided world make it seem like things can be deduced into simple either/or things, whether in the things to blame or the fixes to heal.

This thinking and fighting often only leads us into further divided silos and even more hurt, further and further away from the healing we need.

Two things can be true at once.

More often than not, in this broken world full of hurting people, the reason for both the harm and the healing will not be found in the either/or.

It will be found in true change on multiple fronts.

In listening to the pain and suffering of one another.

In speaking up.

In doing something differently.

In demanding accountability.

In loving well.

This world is broken.

People are hurting more than ever.

When we hurl our either/or solutions at very complicated problems, we further divide, alienate, and abandon one another, ultimately leaving us stuck in the same pattern of hurting and dying people.

Maybe today, rather than shouting our either/or solution at someone, we could sit beside, seek to understand, and do, and I mean really freaking do, something different.