Friendship that insists upon agreement on all matters is not worth the name. Friendship to be real must ever sustain the weight of honest differences, however sharp they be.

MAHATMA GANDHI

Are you able to be friends with those who do not see the world through the same filter as you?

In this polarized world, we are continuously being sought to determine with which team we are siding, regardless of outcome or consequence.

Yet those who truly oppose us are the ones who are most likely to seed the conflict between us, by creating a divide and conquer methodology.

We are continuously working to size up our perspectives in life and thereby become that much more capable of asserting our ideas and opportunities, in order that the virtues that we support may thrive.

In this continuous moment of discord and ultimate disconnect between people with whom we already share a common bond, lies the reality that we are all the stronger for having the strength to recognize our ability to see past individual disparities of perspective in favor of a much more universal take on things.

Even when the disparity is significantly divergent from the way that we view the world, we become increasingly stronger for our ability to appreciate the differences in others, and to celebrate them in the elasticity of our friendship, to enable us to grow ever more understanding of the larger pictures in life.

When we encounter a disparate perspective, even if our internal barometer suggests the perspective that is being shared is diametrically opposite that which we wholeheartedly embrace, then through this opportunity to view the world through the eyes of another, we are offered a chance to perceive how their views and their approach towards things would potentially impact our own world.

Understanding the perspective of others is not necessarily a vehicle to change our own minds, (although it might well be) but more likely it is an opportunity for us to understand how and why we are so firmly rooted in the variables that keep us alive and engaged in the world as we wish to view it.

When you are capable of listening to another without feeling a need to interrupt, contradict or refute that which they are explaining, you are one step closer to embracing what is prerequisite to a civilized society at large.

Happy Saturday!