2024 In Three Stories
Here are three stories about the moment we’re in as a country. To me, all three stories are about faith and polarization, but neither of those words appears in any of them.
In the first story, a man is protesting outside the White House. He sits alone, holding a sign. Somebody approaches him and says: “Why are you doing this? Do you really think that sitting outside here with this sign, that you’re going to change the White House?”
“No,” the man replies. “I don’t. I’m just trying to make sure the White House doesn’t change me.”
The second story is possibly made-up. After a close election, the winning candidate was asked why he thought he won. “Well,” he replied. “I reckon that everyone who knew me voted for my opponent, and everyone who knew my opponent voted for me. The poor son-of-a-gun just knew more people than I did.”
The third story is borrowed from an amazing graduation speech I recently came across. It’s about a man who walked across a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Five thousand people came out to see him do it - or to see him fail, perhaps - and he walked halfway across, stopped, did a backflip in the air, landed on the tightrope, and continued on to the other side.
After that, people came out to see him in even larger numbers. He walked across in shackles, he walked across blindfolded.
As the graduation speaker, University of Texas Professor Mark Lewis, tells it:
Just as he was about to begin yet another crossing, this time pushing a wheelbarrow, he turned to the crowd and shouted “who believes that I can cross pushing this wheelbarrow?” Every hand in the crowd went up. [The tightrope walker] pointed at one man:
“Do you believe that I can do it?” he asked.
“Yes, I believe you can,” said the man.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes,” said the man.
“Absolutely certain?”
“Yes, Absolutely certain.”
“Thank you,” said [the tightrope walker], “then sir, get into the wheelbarrow.”
These stories raise some critical questions for me as we prepare for the year ahead. The questions are listed in reverse order of the stories that prompt them.
What do we really believe? Where and in whom do we put our faith? What do we profess that we are certain of that we are actually not certain of at all?
How does our winner-take-all binary political system distort our understanding of our neighbors? Our political opponents? Public opinion?
What are we willing to do to stop the negativity of the world from changing us?
Our culture wants to push us into boxes. An entire industry wants to profit off of knowing which box we are in.
What’s your source of resilience in the face of that reality?
Andy
Andrew Hanauer is President and CEO of the One America Movement
Great post Andy and all 3 questions are very interesting to ask especially when it comes to the certainty of our belief and faith. What I also noticed is how all 3 questions are correlated in the sense that we usually operate and believe based on the stories that we were told or that we tell ourselves.
It will be interesting to see if we asked ourselves these question everyday for the next 21 days when a belief or certainty about groups of people and political movements pop in our heads.