Working Together

I'm sure the actions of the Congress of the United States have been on all of our minds lately. How could they not be? It's almost like a circus show. Republicans blaming Democrats, and vice a versa. It has become a blame game, and no longer seems to be a forum for intelligible debate. A few things hit me tonight about this whole mess. One, that one person cannot possibly (with the exception of the One) experience everything there is to experience. Two, we need differing opinions to be able to come to the best solutions. Three, by finding the commonalities in differing opinions we find the underlying principles, the truth.

Even in one community that encompasses twelve square miles, each and every person has a different experience of life. It is through, or because of, those experiences that we form our opinions. It would make sense, then, that the opinions we hold depend in large part on the experiences we have had. It would also make sense that no one person's opinion is perfect. No one party's answer is the perfect answer, because that answer has come from their narrow perspective on life.

Detectives piece together what really happened at a crime scene by scrutinizing every opinion of every witness they can find. By looking at the problem from each angle, they are closer to finding the truth than if they only consulted with one witness. Each person is like a witness to life, each bringing a different angle to what happens. No angle is wrong. No angle is necessarily right. But by bringing them together you can find the commonalities and find the right answer. When people who come together put their personal opinions above others' opinions, the ability to see the beauty in each other's input is lost. Pride and false self-importance destroys the ability to work together. It kills the camaraderie needed to devise solutions together.

This brings me to my next point: people with differing opinions working together can come up with a better solution than one person merely working off of his/her own opinions. When you take two disparaging opinions and look for the commonalities you are closer to finding true principles. It is these principles that we need to work from to find great solutions. The truth is, opinions are merely that: opinions. They are not truth. But when you bring people together with different views on life and look for the areas where they can agree, we come closer to the truth.

We are all in this together. We are all on the same team. Or have we forgotten? The blood that was shed to create our freedom forged a bond in this country that now seems to be forgotten. During the Constitutional Convention everyone didn't agree on everything. In fact, there was probably not a single thing that everyone agreed on 100%, except that they needed to be united. They were willing to work together for the greater good. They were willing to find the truth underneath their various and diverging opinions. They put aside their personal pride to bring this country together, and we can do the same. Or can we? Remember: united we stand; divided we fall.