If I Were President

A great podcast host asked me what would be the first thing I would do if I were President. There are hundreds of things on my list, but I would start here:

Where to Start?

I would invite everyone to sit in a circle– those with varied interests and opposing agendas, long time lawmakers, ordinary people, and experts in every conceivable field. I would mix them up– no color-coded divisions, no aisle, no one behind a podium and no one buried in the back. I would lay out the ground rules for deep respectful listening and non-violent communication and conflict resolution and I would have trained facilitators present to help everyone adhere to the guidelines. I would make it clear that whoever cannot abide by the rules would be asked to leave, but that they would also be welcomed back as soon as they were ready to listen to others the way they want to be heard and speak the way they want to be spoken to.

I would tell everyone how desperately we Americans need to come together, work together, and resolve our differences peacefully, and that we have a supreme responsibility to model how this is done. And since we won‘t do it perfectly, we give ourselves permission to err, but we also agree to be coached back into cooperation when we lose our cool.

Moving to a Win/Win

In response to the stress of conflict, we tend to fight, freeze, or flee, and unfortunately too many of us are being conditioned to fight. Rarely do we keep the focus on taking responsibility ourselves to be the ones who de-escalate conflict and help resolve it.

I’m afraid we are still caught in the Win/Lose paradigm, a theme we have been playing out forever with a revolving door of characters, keeping alive a fantasy that the good guys must beat the bad guys. And of course it is always someone else who is the bad guy. It’s easy to fall into this trap and it’s hard to get out. Most of us know this in our own lives. The never-ending challenges of marriage, parenting, and work, for example, show us how difficult it can be to move to a Win/Win paradigm of human relations… because it means we must work with, not against, each other. It’s that simple and that difficult. It means that the issues themselves are secondary to the overarching need to mend our fences and find solutions everyone can live with– for the sake not only of our wellbeing but of our survival.

The Stakes are So High

The stakes are so high in America today. What will our country look like in the coming months and after the November election? I don’t want to be left hating anyone no matter how it turns out. I just want to continue down my path of advocating love and non-violence the best I can. Hatred and violence are what got us here. They will never be the solution. I want to join with everyone who is taking a powerful stand for peace, love, inclusivity, equal justice, and our ultimate reunion as the United States. A powerful stand doesn’t require force or aggression. It requires the resoluteness of a Gandhi, a Rosa Parks, or a Greta.

Non-Violence as Our Theme Song

A commitment to non-violence is the one undertaking that ensures that if we can’t yet agree, if we’re not ready to move our chairs into a circle and pass a talking stick, at the very least we will refrain from attacking each other with words, shooting each other at a rally, and bombing innocent people in their beds. It would be life-changing. It  would immediately shift the whole tenor of politics in America; we would have in place the most essential requirement for repairing our ruptured relations and pulling ourselves off the ledge of possible extinction.

I’m sure my ability to speak my truth to power with love will be sorely tested over the next few months and probably years, but I just don’t see any other way. Violence begets violence. Love begets care begets peace.