I got in a heated discussion a while back with a brilliant young woman over language, cultural communities, appropriation and the like. This morning, I found this INCREDIBLE video and wanted to share it with her, only to find that I’d been removed from her facebook friends list.
Valuable lesson in this. Truly. Disagreement can sometimes be one of the highest compliments you can pay another: your beliefs don’t align 100%, but that even though you were SO vehemently opposed to each others’ viewpoints, with a little time, distance, and understanding, bits and pieces of their argument can—and hopefully will—augment and expand your own ideas.
So before I go isolating my own self from others who disagree so strongly with something very near and dear to my own way of thinking, I will take pause to remember this day when there was something uniquely valuable learned and gained, and that I may never have the opportunity to tell her that she was the reason for it.
Love y’all.