Opposing Views: An Essay

I like it when people who have opposing views can have civil conversations about them.  Conversations with depth and breadth looking at the issues from many sides.  Sometimes with people even changing their minds and moving from one side to the other based on new knowledge and information.  That seems rare and maybe it always has been.   

Why is that?  How can we become so certain of what we believe that we stop listening to what opponents or people with differing views have to say?  I do not pretend to have the answers to those questions, but I am still seeking the answers.   

I know that many people are much smarter than I am and that many people are much better educated than I will ever be, but I also know a few things and some of those things seem right to me.   

I believe that life is to be revered and respected.  I believe that people should try to get along.  Although that is not always possible, because all parties must be willing to try.  I believe that adults need to respect children and men and women mutually respect each other.  I do not believe that one race or nationality is superior to another.  I believe that persons with disabilities have the right to live. 
  

I do not believe that it is all right for persons of one religion to try to annihilate persons from all other beliefs from the face of the earth.  Nor do I believe that it is okay for one nation to be so rich as to make many other nations and people poor.  I would like to see us all have rich and meaningful lives full of hope and promise.   

Friends of mine, Doctor J. Iverson Riddle and Holly Riddle once wrote an article called “The Joy Quotient” where they devised a method of counting the smiles of nonverbal individuals to try to determine those person’s happiness levels in given situations.  I thought then, and still do, that was a genius concept.   

  

Perhaps, I am rambling and ranting here, but it seems to me like many people are going to the far corners of their belief systems seeing things as all black or all white with there being no possibility of there being any gray.  Sometimes things are all one way or the other, but  many times there really is legitimate middle ground.   

What would the joy quotient of people across the world be today if we simply observed and counted their smiles?   I fear that the answer would not be pleasing to us.  We may not be responsible for other people’s happiness, but we certainly can be at fault for their misery.  I would like to see us doing better than that.  I would like to be able to count more smiles.   

©Patty F. Cooper, Elizabethton, Tennessee August 11^th, 2014

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