Planting seeds encouraging violence,
directly or indirectly, is SO wrong–
using the “divide and conquer” approach
will work in our country
if we do not stay focused on what
message we should be sharing . . .
and that would mean
we ALL lose!

we need to focus on:
• learning to communicate,
• learning to speak AND listen,
ª respectfully exchanging diverse
opinions about important issues,
• listening to others with the
same respect we want
for ourselves
• opening our minds and hearts
BEFORE opening our mouths

this is not easy and we need to
work hard to exchange OPINIONS
and to REMOVE the
emotionally-charged,
insulting, rude words and
degrading labels from our speech

social media has often, unfortunately,
driven many good individuals to
leave that medium because of the
hatefulness and intense judgements
expressed by some on their “friends”
list and that decreases the number of
moderate voices being heard
(I had an exchange the other day
with someone who had experiences
with health care that were the
opposite of my experiences,
but it did not wind up with insults
or harsh words. We just expressed
our opinions and we are still “friends”–
this is as it should be –
• communicate, but don’t judge
• share experiences and OPINIONS
knowing that different perspectives
do not mean one is “right” and
one is “wrong,” they are just
different OPINIONS drawn from
different experiences

we do need to share our opinions
and thoughts so that we can come
to better decisions about how we
need to resolve problems,
BUT
we need to review and improve
our communication skills FIRST
and
we need to remember
. . . we are ALL people,
flawed perhaps,
but people and
we ALL need to be heard
in order for us ALL
to live on this earth
together . . .

diversity – being different
can be a good thing as we
LEARN to look at things from many
different perspectives to respect
others as we want to be respected
and GROW as people — we ALL win!

simple . . . not easy!