
Over the holidays I caught up with one of my oldest boyhood friends, Mike. We met when my family moved from Massachusetts to New York. He was a year ahead of me in school, but we lived down the street from each other, and we became constant companions.
Through the years we lost track of each other. I went to college in Ohio and started teaching in Virginia. He went crabbing on the Chesapeake Bay, then into sales, then joined the IRS. The next thing I knew I was sitting on the couch watching him speaking as an FBI agent on Unsolved Mysteries. I had no idea he was working for the bureau or that he was located in New Orleans! At that point, I was teaching Kindergarten and had been named my district’s Teacher of the Year. Needless to say, we took different paths in life.
Fast forward a few decades and he’s living in Virginia, too, about four hours away. We tripped over each other on LinkedIn, started messaging there, then texting, then phone calls. It was hit and miss. He would call out of the blue as I was boarding a plane and couldn’t answer. I would keep leaving messages asking to arrange for a time when we were both free to talk. Catching up, it was amazing how many parallels there were in our lives since our school days. For all the gaps in our history, we are still right there as best friends when we talk.

As I was saying, we were catching up over the phone, one thing led to another, and eventually the conversation turned to the state of the country. Being a law and order guy, I figured he was going to have the standard views on what should and shouldn’t be. Being an educator, he assumed I was going to be his polar opposite. But as we talked, we instinctively closed the gaps of all those years apart. “Look, McGee,” (that’s his nickname for me) “Things will get better when people start finding some common ground to work together. There’s too many gaps that are too far apart, and that’s how we got to this point.” I heard myself agreeing and asking him to say more. “It’s not us against them,” he said. “We may not agree on all the details, but we need to start working together on the big stuff.”
He felt me out on everything from the pandemic to the election, and we were pleasantly surprised that without party labels or partisanship, we saw things very much alike; two boyhood friends still looking at the world from the perspective of that small town where we first met. He was actually more optimistic about things than I was. “But Ed,” (my nickname for him – that’s another story) “Everything feels so gridlocked. How do we get out of this pattern of people being pitted against each other?” His tone was calm and confident. “People see things for what they are, McGee. They don’t listen to all the extreme talk. They have to live in reality. When they want to figure things out, they figure things out. It's the only way forward.” For all he has seen across his careers, he still believes in people being able to come together and get things done. We just need to fill in the chasms that have been created in how we talk and think about ourselves and each other.
I got off that call with a clarity and reassurance that only a longtime friend can provide, and I share it with you as you read this. Let’s resolve to find ways to close gaps in our thinking; to ease the extremes and open our minds to different points of view. It's not that differences don’t exist, but building common understanding is the first step in making things better. Expand your conversations to include points of view that challenge your thinking and make you uncomfortable, because we know as educators that’s where growth happens. In that growth is hope, and in that hope things can get better. What makes it harder is hardening in our ways, and we can see where that has led us. Maybe that's the first thing we can all agree on...
Mike and I keep saying we will meet in person more often now that we’re retired, but four hours is four hours, so that hasn’t been easy, either. Still, it’s worth it when we do. Having this kind of history and investment in each other’s lives bridges the gaps across the years. We miss out on this when we're out of contact.
Now we're back in each other's lives and all this is understood. Everything gets better with understanding.

Join us in finding ways forward at The Worthy Educator!
Comentarios