If.

I don’t care who you voted for. I ask the following from anyone, regardless of party. Because I’m also asking it of myself, too.

I ask you to be, first, a kind person. Refuse to tolerate for others what you would not tolerate for yourself. Take one full minute to imagine yourself in their shoes before you decide what is acceptable for them to endure.

Keep learning. Expand your circle and keep yourself open to new ideas. See the value of other’s opinions, even if you don’t yet agree or understand. When someone tells you their lived truth, believe them.

I ask you to be on guard against the desire to control others, even if you think it’s for their own good. Check your prejudices. Consider your actions carefully. Avoid pressing your preferences onto the path of other people’s lives.

I ask you to fight for “their” rights as fiercely as you might for your own. Do not make excuses for building up your rights on bowed backs.

I ask you to see every person who is unlike you as worthy as you believe your family, friends and yourself to be.

Seek fairness for all.

Realize how often fear makes us hide from each other.  Consider for a moment who might be afraid of you, maybe even someone you know. Because someone most certainly is. Should they be?

I ask you to consider: are ALL of them evil? Are ALL of them bigots or fascists or racists or communists or simpletons? Really? ALL of them?

I ask you to see our common resources as something to be stewarded well and shared responsibly, especially in times when others seem to need more.

I ask you to care about other people’s ideas, other identities, other ways of seeing and being. What have they lived through that you haven’t?

I ask you to consider that working with one another is better than judging one another, and that it is possible even to learn from one another, so that the whole is greater than the sum.

Look past what you’ve been told. Dig deeper.

Read the room. Gentle listening often goes much further than defending your side. Maybe it’s not your side that should be defended this time.

And finally, I ask you to insist on humanity in all things, being more vigilant towards taming your own heart, even more than anyone else’s.

If you do these things, you will have the potential to heal this unhappy Union as much as any one party, leader, religion or legislation that you currently believe in.

If.