This morning, I wrote about disagreeing. More specifically, I wrote to try to answer the question, “Which comes first, hate or disagreement?” Which honestly felt a lot like trying to answer the question, “Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?”
I found myself writing in circles trying to answer the question and come up with an origin for one or the other (spoiler, I didn’t), but the one thing I did keep coming back to was love.
Love and creating an opportunity to love seems to de-escalate hate within disagreement.
Take for example your friends and family. Can you think of anyone who has ever completely agreed, 100% all the time, with their parents? Much less all of their friends? I don’t think I can, but if you do, please let me know.
When we disagree with those we love, it seems easier to agree to disagree, move on with life and then go get dinner afterward. Compare that to disagreeing with those that we don’t love, or better yet, those we don’t give ourselves the chance to love or opportunity to know and understand, agreeing to disagree becomes much harder, while disagreeing and moving toward hate feels easier.
Again, I still don’t know what comes first, disagreement or hate, but I do believe that taking the time to get to know those we disagree with more might just help evaporate some of the world’s hate.
-Cliff
Cliff’s Note: To know is to love.