What If The Cure For Division Is Simple Acceptance

Acceptance is not the same thing as agreement, and forgetting that is costing us our peace. In this episode, I discuss why courtesy, patience, and civility seem to be disappearing—and why we should be able to disagree without trying to control one another.

If you’re exhausted by constant outrage and division, this conversation offers a calmer perspective.

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Transcript

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Welcome And The Lost Virtue

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Welcome to incoming Margie Avery. Will we consider life? Hi, welcome to Incoming. This is Margie Avery, your host. Today, I'm gonna get a little bit political on you, I guess. Somebody might say it's political, so you know, I I don't want to trigger anybody. Of all the things that have disappeared from society, pretty much unilaterally, not just in this country, but kind of everywhere, I mean courtesy, grace, patience, civility. I think the one that I miss the most is acceptance. You know, I did an episode earlier this year, and I was talking about the issues with, you know, the Muslim versus the Christian ideology. Now, I don't know enough about the actual Muslim teachings to know if they teach acceptance, but I do know that Judaism,

Acceptance Without Losing Yourself

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity all speak about acceptance. And you know, that's something that would solve a lot of these conflicts in society. Now, mind you, I guess I might be in some ways moderate, because I do think that everybody deserves a seat at the table. But because you get a seat at the table, it doesn't mean that you own the table. And this is the problem. I've talked a lot about how people, you know, they become what they say they're against. They they get a right and they over-exercise it, they push it too far, and here we go down the rabbit hole of now that I have my rights, you no longer have your rights. I've talked about, you know, men who identify as women but want to use the women's bathroom. And I'm not gonna go down all that again. You can look up the old episodes and listen to that if you want to hear my discussion about

Growing Up Around Many Cultures

SPEAKER_01 2:33

that. But let me start by giving you a brief story. When I was a kid growing up, I'm not even gonna say where I lived because it's not important, but it was a culturally diverse neighborhood. It was on the East Coast, I'll give you that. And when my sister and I moved there with my parents, I was four and my sister seven years older, she's about 11. And my parents would have been in their 30s. And the couple that lived next door, they had a house that uh the downstairs they lived in, the upstairs they rented out. And they rented it to a young couple who had just come from Italy, and they had a young son who was about three or four at the time. And I mean, like they barely spoke English, and they had family that lived across the street from us. There was a school, and the other side of the school were it was like a row of apartments. They had family that lived there. The older couple that owned the house were Orthodox Jew. And I remember my mother's first encounter. My mother and father came from a small town in West Virginia. Yes, there were Jewish people there. I think West Virginia is the only state that I've ever heard, like they can actually tell you how many Jewish people they have living there. But if they practiced, they practiced out of a home or something like that. There wasn't a synagogue. The overwhelming religion was uh assembly of God, Pentecostal, Baptist, a little bit of Methodist Presbyterian. But anyway, my mother was not the most worldly person. And she'd gone over next door to visit the wife and have coffee, and she came home upset because she told my father, she said, Well, Mrs. So-and-so thinks that Jesus is a mumser. And when I asked her what that meant, she said that it meant bastard. And my dad explained to her that that's the Jewish belief. So my mom was like, Okay. Well, this Orthodox Jewish couple, and they were, you know, they probably to me at four, five, six, seven years old when I lived there, seemed much older than they were. They were probably in their late 60s, but back then, late 60s looked different than it does now. So anyway, we became quite close to them, close enough that my parents hosted their, I think it was their 50th wedding anniversary at our house, whatever the golden anniversary is. Anyway, so they started uh at Christmas, they would bring gifts over for my sister and I. They became our adopted grandparents. And uh my mother became so in love with the Orthodox kitchen that she wanted one. Anyway, the point is my parents exposed us. My parents didn't do everything right, but one thing that they did really well is they exposed us to a lot of different cultures, and the overriding theme was always acceptance. Not to where you give up your beliefs, where you can allow yourself to think outside of the box, but always with acceptance. And all of the people we encountered accepted us. Now, I should also mention my parents were a biracial, interracial couple, and this was in the late 60s, early 70s. Not terribly accepted, but they lived their regular middle class life. My father always had very good jobs. He worked for it was General Foods, which later became Kraft Foods, and he was very high up, uh, you know, their distribution warehouse manager. We had parties at our house, and VPs came, and you know, he was very respected. People learned to look past maybe their preconceived notions about interracial couples, and a lot of it was that it was preconceived notions because they hadn't really experienced it. And they came to love my mom and dad. So I was exposed to a lot of acceptance, and you know, clearly, these other people I'm talking about, they were being accepting. Now, the reason I mentioned the young couple from Italy that rented upstairs from the older Orthodox Jewish couple is because obviously they were Roman Catholic. You know, I would go over to lunch with his, I will tell you this, his name was Giuseppe, common name, so it doesn't give anything away. And I'm only being like this because these aren't public people, these are their names aren't up for grabs, these are ordinary people, and I know that the older couple had kids and grandkids at that time. There's still people living. I don't want to put people's names out there in a way that they might not appreciate for some reason.

A Yarmulke And A Bigger Lesson

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Anyway, um, one day, uh the garage that this older couple kept behind their house, they had stacked up glass bottles of seltzer water, and it had those sprayers on the top. And Giuseppe was playing around with it, and he's spraying the seltzer water on the driveway. And the older gentleman was very frugal, and this was money, and he was he was upset. So here goes the old man and Giuseppe into the house, and you can hear them in their fussing at each other. Well, a little while later, here comes Giuseppe walking out the front door with a yarmulk on. And his mother was thanking them up and down. Oh, thank you for giving that to Giuseppe. Thank you for being so nice. Acceptance, people. Acceptance. Now we feel that it's our way or the highway. And now that I've shared that backstory, you have the foundation. Here's where I'm going with it.

Rights Without Owning The Table

SPEAKER_01 8:46

That you have people now that, okay, if you believe in the right to keep and bear arms and you're a good gun owner, and I don't disagree with that. I I believe in those things. And you know, you're proud of being an American, things like that. That doesn't mean that everybody else has to feel that way. Other people have a right to feel that we need tighter gun control, to feel bothered by that kind of an ideology, and to feel that it's not inclusive. But neither side has a right to keep pointing fingers and trying to legally shut up the other side and just arbitrarily disregarding how they feel, what they believe. We need a little more acceptance. We need a lot less legislation because I think it was Eddie Murphy that said this years ago that you cannot legislate away prejudice. If it wasn't him, I apologize if I'm speaking out of school, as they say down south. I my memory was it was him. But whoever said it, they were absolutely right. Yes, some areas you do need legislation, you know, to give people housing rights, to give people the right to not be attacked walking down the street because of how they choose to dress something like that. I'm all for that. But you do need to accept that other people feel differently than you. And as long as they don't impede your right to live, to enjoy your life, to do what you want to do, to come and go, they don't harass you in some way, they don't limit your ability to do things, then can't it just be okay? If a lifelong appellation Pentecostal can find a common ground with an Orthodox Jew, Russian Jew, her husband was, well, he was born at the turn of the century. There was no Israel, so I guess it would have been Palestine that he was from. I don't know, but somewhere over there. The fact is, if those two groups can find common ground, with the a young couple living next door that are interracial, something, I mean, parts of the South were still legally segregated. And it wasn't only the South that felt this way. Even people that believed in rights for African Americans did not necessarily believe in interracial marriage. But here we are living around Cubans and old, you know, really like came over on the, you know, Ellis Island from many parts of Europe, and there's us, and we're we're all just living together, Puerto Ricans. I mean, I I don't think that there was a nationality that was missed, but we all accepted and we all got along. And my sister was invited to bar mitzvahs, and my mother learned from our next door neighbor how important these were, what a big deal. She went on and bought her beautiful dress, had her hair done, respected the culture, you know, and that is something that I think I miss the

Entitlement And Everyday Public Rudeness

SPEAKER_01 12:16

most. I mean, besides the fact that in society we think that it's okay that anywhere we go in public, we're the only thing there. Our kids can behave any way that they want to, and everybody just needs to accept it. You know, that parking space definitely belongs to me. I'm reaching for that item first in the grocery store. You know, I need to be first in line to get on the plane, even though I don't have a ticket for that, and you do. And if you say something, we're gonna get a fight. I paid for the seat on the plane, but I'm gonna stick my feet under your seat and bang on your seat. All of these rude, inconsiderate things that people do. But I I guess I could deal with all of those. The one that I want back is I want acceptance. Can both sides just accept and a way of thinking outside of your own and not think that all of society has to think the way that you do in order for it to be said that they are accepting you? Because I have lived it, I have seen it, I have experienced it. It is entirely possible for very unlikely groups to assess you as who you are, to accept you even if they don't agree with you. It's possible. I can accept you even if I don't agree with you. So maybe if we had a little more practicing that, but we spent too many decades in a society that has taught us to look outward for the solution to all of our problems, rather than looking at ourself and thinking, what part do I play in this and what could I do differently that might, you know, defuse these situations a bit. My parents chose to just live their life. And people who might have looked at them cross-eyed initially began to see, well, they're no different than our family. They live just like our family does. They sit down and have dinner, they have taught their children a religion, they mow their lawn, they keep their house clean, they take their trash out. I don't see anything to be afraid of here. So even though I may not agree with that, and I might not want one of my kids to marry somebody from a different race, I can accept that these people are okay. It can be done, people. It can be done.

A TV Show Mirror On Society

SPEAKER_01 14:38

I I've started watching this new show, Your Friends and Neighbors, and I don't know if this is the intention of the writers, but whether it is or not, they do a fabulous job of showing like a truly accurate example of how people in society are now. If you haven't watched this show, watch it. There's this guy, it's portrayed by John Hamm. He's a very, let's say, upper middle-class income guy. Gets treated poorly at work, loses his job. He's divorced because his wife cheated on him with a good friend, and he begins stealing from his neighbors. Anyway, but throughout the narrative of this, every single person that's in this guy's life has always got him apologizing rather than accepting him at all, trying to make him feel bad for their bad behavior. And all of these people and their interactions, none of them take two minutes and look and say, hey, you know, that's on me. Or maybe I could have handled this better. They're they're really quick to tell others in the group what they need to improve on, but not themselves. And that is a great disservice that's been done to society. We have spent too many generations, you know, if you're unhappy on the job, you could spend all day listening how everybody on that job is wrong. But at the end of the day, is there something you can do differently? If there's not, start looking for a new job. Change jobs every six months. I don't care. There's always a six-month honeymoon. But if you're having an interaction with a neighbor or somebody out, show a little grace, you know. I mean, instead of constantly judging, try a little understanding and acceptance. Not gonna say that it solves everything, but it could help in a lot of situations.

Own Your Part And Step Back

SPEAKER_01 16:41

When you are generally feeling unhappy in life, stop listening to this narrative that has trained everybody to say, well, I act this way and it's my parents' fault. I'm in a bad mood because of this thing that my spouse did or my kid did. If you are grown enough and sentient enough that you can identify what the problem is, then you can resolve it on your end. Choose not to let it affect you that way. If you know it it what their behavior is maybe bad, but how you're behaving because of it is is your bad, not theirs. So if you need to distance yourself from them, distance yourself from them. And stop this writing people off thing. Life is a is a big evolutionary process. People come, people go, things change. You don't have to do these dramatic, I'm writing people off. You can just say, you know what, they're kind of not bringing anything pleasant into my life right now, so I'm gonna step back for a bit. You know, maybe we'll change, but I'm gonna keep acting like me, just in spite of how they're behaving. I'm gonna keep being me. I'm not gonna be rude, I'm not gonna act just like them, I'm going to be me. And you never know, things could change. But own your part of it. You know, don't be like an adolescent that says, well, I'm behaving pig headed and in all these combative ways because of how my parents are behaving. Well, if you think that you're grown enough that you should be able to make decisions and do what you want to do, then you're grown enough to not be blaming another adult for your behavior. And there's other ways you can handle it. Take five minutes and see the other person in the room's perspective and consider it for a moment. You don't have to agree with it, but it wouldn't hurt you to have a little understanding of what it is, where it's coming from, and show some respect for it. If you want them to respect your perspective, maybe you need to practice what you preach, which is another example of acceptance.

Respect Across Countries And Languages

SPEAKER_01 19:00

You know, maybe countries need to quit pointing fingers at each other and saying, oh, that the US does this, this, and this. Oh, Germany does this and this. Well, England needs to do that, that, and that. How about you accept that that's none of your business? If you don't live there and it's not impacting you, it's really none of your business. If that country is doing something that is directly impacting you, then deal with that. But have a little acceptance. Your culture has its right to how it does things. So does that other one. Which I've talked about before. If you come to live in the United States, you cannot expect you have moved into an English-speaking country. You can't declare it a non-English speaking country because you don't speak English, or because a number of people have come here and their native language is not English. I can't move to Germany and decide that, well, I moved here and I speak English, so therefore, this is no longer a German-speaking country. This is an English-speaking country. You see, see where I went with that? Looking at someone else's perspective for a moment. If you choose to live in a country that it's a different language, then you probably should learn that language. And you probably should accept that they have certain societal norms, and how you're conducting yourself may be fine, but people might look at you cross-eyed every time you do it. And don't get angry about it. Accept that they're different. And you know what? Eventually they'll probably accept that you're different. But you see what I'm saying here? Just a little acceptance, a little less judgment, a little less, you know, what would you want to call it?

A Weekly Case For Better Manners

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Like piety. So that's my message for the week. Maybe we'll every week we'll we'll pick, you know, something that has to do with manners, and I'll make a case for bringing them back. And I'm not calling for anything crazy, and I'm not trying to turn society upside down. I'm just saying that maybe you need to understand that there's other voices in the room beside your own and accept a little bit. You know, again, if if it's truly impacting your ability to live your life the way that you want, then that's a different discussion that has to take place. They need to do a little more accepting. And, you know, your living your life can't impede everybody around you. You live in society. We have to find a middle ground. But maybe everybody could just take a moment for your own mental health, for the mental health of those around you, and stop before you judge, before you blame, before you point fingers, look at yourself inward instead of outward, determine your part in this, what you could do differently. And if maybe it comes down to just a little bit of acceptance of someone else's way of doing things. Anyway, that's my thought for the week. We'll talk next week. Leave comments, tell your friends about the show if you like it, and thank you for listening.