Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is,to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. Perhaps you do carry within yourself the possibility of shaping and forming as a particularly happy and pure way of living; train yourself to it - but take whatever comes with great trust, and only if comes out of your own will, out of some need of your inmost being, take it upon yourself and hate nothing.

When our stories require us to pass judgment, to inflict shame on ourselves and others, to set ourselves apart, we cause harm. Bigot, prig, the voice in my head calls me. And, I must answer honestly. I must answer yes. I want to make it not so. I have work to do on myself. I need a new story.

We need to adore difference so that we can all finally, in fact, be the same in the only sense that matters: as human beings. And what magnificence that sameness is.

So how about we walk across the road and listen? And soon ask to be listened to, too. And promise never to interrupt. Only to learn. And eventually to respect?

And then, who knows?

To love?

We, therefore, become afraid to hear the other person’s thoughts because to consider them would be, we feel, to betray our deepest selves. So we make sure that no idea can develop in either of us that does not fit our certainty of who we are and who they are. We stop them. We interrupt.

I can’t think of a sadder way to die than with the knowledge that I never showed up in this world as who I really am. I can’t think of a more graced way to die than with the knowledge that I showed up here as my true self, the best I knew how, able to engage life freely and lovingly because I had become fierce with reality. –Parker Palmer, On the Brink of Everything.