Keeping up with sensitivities

Matt Pearl

There are all kinds of people in this world that I can find a way to like—and some of them even like me back.

I receive at times feedback on my editorial columns, some positive and some negative. Just this past week, I had a man I consider a friend, a person who is a faithful reader of the paper, disagree with one of my perspectives. I can take it. It just means I disagreed with him as well. Nobody got sick or died from the experience, and two grown men should be able to have differing opinions on the world around us. This man and I probably still don’t agree on the issue in question, but I enjoyed the exchange, and I hope he did, too.

You see, I can handle folks who see politics or issues of society differently from the way I see them. I can handle people who drive a perspective on the environment or on conservatism and/or liberalism. There’s really only one kind of person with whom I struggle to find common ground: Someone who is looking for a reason to get offended.

Now let’s be clear: I try hard not to spend my life removing my foot from my mouth. I don’t like speaking in a way that hurts others—but my experience is that some folks are on the constant, vigilant lookout for speech or actions they consider offensive.

At 37 years of age, I consider myself far too young to remove my filter completely, and speak—and older folks have often instructed me it is their right to do—without showing any self-restraint. While I don’t overdo it, I still work to speak in a dignified way, particularly in the public setting. But I can’t keep up with some folk’s sensitivities. We live in a society where we have grown to take ourselves so seriously that many folks believe that anyone else expressing a differing opinion than their own is attacking the listener personally.

When we form our opinions, we do so based upon our personal values, as well the beliefs with which we were raised. Since no two of us had the exact same experiences in our formative years, we by nature will have conflicting opinions. You know it, and I know it — what’s the matter with folks who can’t understand that we’re all different?

That person who cannot tolerate a difference of opinion is always present, ready to give me the stink eye for something I’ve said or written. In my business, my first thought is usually, “Oh, well. Agree or disagree with me, at least this person is reading the paper.” I guess I would prefer folks to be happy with me, but I’m not so in love with being agreed with that I’m willing to change my opinions to gain their approval. In my experience, folks don’t respect a person who shows the quality of being wishy-washy anyway. I’d rather be respectfully disagreed with than scornfully manipulated.

I learned this early on in my management and ownership of my newspaper—because at that point my skin was pretty thin. If I got a critical remark or had someone respond to a mistake in the paper, I took it pretty personally. Then I realized I was being one of those folks: the ones who get offended when someone disagrees with them.

My final conclusion: If a person believes in or stands for anything, he will make adversaries out of folks who believe or stand on the opposite platform. That’s life. You can be offended that the other viewpoint exists, or get agitated when someone expresses that other perspective, but you’re just wasting your energy.

Davy Crockett is credited with speaking the adage “Be always sure you’re right, then go ahead.” Whether the pioneer/statesman really said this or not, it’s good advice for all of us. But when you do go ahead, you know someone will be there to criticize your steps. Just keep going.