Much has been made in recent weeks about unity here in the United States.\u00a0 Joe Biden made it a centerpiece of his inauguration speech.\u00a0 \u00a0But what does it really mean?<\/p>\n
There are many different ways to define unity, but I like Stephen Covey’s the best.\u00a0 \u00a0He says in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People\u00a0 \u00a0“Insecure people think that all reality should be amenable to their paradigms. They have a high need to clone others, to mold them over into their own thinking. They don\u2019t realize that the very strength of the relationship is in having another point of view. Sameness is not oneness; uniformity is not unity. Unity, or oneness, is complementariness, not sameness. Sameness is uncreative\u2026 and boring. The essence of synergy is to value the differences.”<\/p>\n
What does this mean?\u00a0 It means that we all have to be pulling on the same rope, but we won’t all pull on it in the same way.\u00a0 It means that we won’t all agree on what color the rope should be but we know that we need one.\u00a0 It means that we are all looking at the same big picture but recognizing and celebrating the nuances of what makes us all the pieces that make up the puzzle.<\/p>\n
It does NOT mean we will agree on everything 100%.\u00a0 If you have 2 or more people in any situation and there are NOT any differences of opinion someone is lying.\u00a0 \u00a0Even identical twins, who have the most in common of any 2 humans on Earth, are not clones.\u00a0 They are different people with different views and different experiences.<\/p>\n
In the realm of politics it means we are Americans first.\u00a0 \u00a0Of course we will have disagreements on how to govern and what the role of the government should be in areas like education and health care.\u00a0 Those differences should be celebrated, not demonized.\u00a0 However, in order to form a more perfect union we DO all have to work together.\u00a0 We DO all have to have the greater good in mind.\u00a0 We DO all have to acknowledge that compromise and working together is the only way we are ever going to get anything accomplished.\u00a0 Sitting back with our arms crossed refusing to accept any idea out of hand because it comes from “the other side” is childish and self destructive.\u00a0 It certainly isn’t what the founding fathers had in mind.<\/p>\n
This doesn’t mean all ideas are created equal.\u00a0 Conspiracy theories and outright lies should not get the same level of consideration as facts.\u00a0 \u00a0Children sometimes lack the ability to separate fact from fiction- they just haven’t lived long enough yet to have that skill.\u00a0 As adults we are supposed to do better.\u00a0 We are supposed to use our experience and intelligence to understand the difference and understand what is truly just a difference of opinion and what is truly fact vs. fiction.<\/p>\n
Is this possible for us?\u00a0 Can we ever, as a nation, get back to where we were not all that long ago when a good idea was a good idea no matter where it came from?\u00a0 I hope so.\u00a0 Because if we can’t we’re no longer working for a more perfect union.\u00a0 And no American should want that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Much has been made in recent weeks about unity here in the United States.\u00a0 Joe Biden made it a centerpiece of his inauguration speech.\u00a0 \u00a0But what does it really mean? There are many different ways to define unity, but I like Stephen Covey’s the best.\u00a0 \u00a0He says in his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People\u00a0 \u00a0“Insecure people think… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[24,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-advice","category-issues"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/unity-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3532"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3532\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beckypalmer.me\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}