Go Ahead. Disagree With Me.

               One of my daughters tended to get into unnecessary, interminable arguments with her childhood best friend. Both bright, opinionated and stubborn, they loved each other but would occasionally butt heads with vigor. Once, my daughter came home from school furious, absolutely fuming, because they'd argued about vacations. "She won't admit that our vacation was better than hers!" my angry child informed me.

                "It's a good thing that she loved her vacation. Hers was best for her family, and ours was best for our family," I told her. My offspring did not agree; she practically snorted with derision.

                "But ours was so much better than hers! Hers was lame! She just won't admit it!"

                In spite of my repeated attempts to explain that everyone has different tastes, and that everyone should be happy with their own lives instead of being envious of others, they were both so angry that they didn't speak to each other for a couple of days, each convinced that their trip was best (and that the other girl was the stubborn one).

                Two or three years later, they got into an argument about religion. Again, my daughter came home from school fuming and angry. Both our families attended Christian churches, but, of course, there are differences in doctrine. The girls had been arguing about one of those differences.

                "A lot of churches believe that," I told her when she explained her friend's position.

                "But that's wrong!"

                "Yeah, but they think we're the ones who are wrong."

                We went around and around. I tried, repeatedly, to explain that everyone believes different things, that that's OK. Everyone needs to be polite and respectful to others whose opinions are different.

                "But I explained to her how it is, and she just kept repeating!"

                "And you kept repeating."

                "I was explaining! She wouldn't listen!"

                "And she was explaining what she believed. She listened and she understood you; she just didn't change her mind. After you each said it once, you need to stop. After once, it's not explaining any more. It's arguing. Arguing will not change people's minds. It will just make them angry. She's too good a friend to lose over a difference of opinion."

                I was frustrating my daughter almost as much as her friend was. Finally, she snapped at me, "So I'm just supposed to let people think things that are wrong?" She was apparently unprepared for my answer:

                "YES!"

                 I become more and more convinced that parents must have stopped telling their kids this at some point. So many people seem totally unclear on the fact that people have a moral, and in the U. S., a legal, right to think and say things that others find silly, superstitious, prejudiced, immoral, inaccurate and in any other way just plain wrong.

                I watch in amazement as people who consider themselves freethinking libertarians comment on something in the media by saying, "I can't even believe they're allowed to say that!" without a hint of irony.

                Quite often, the people who profess to be the most open minded will be the most scathing toward anyone who disagrees with them. Sometimes I'll have ludicrous conversations with people. They'll be going all existential, insisting things like, "There is no universal right or wrong. Everyone's path is just as valid as anyone else's," and I'll be unable to resist saying, "So, my path of choosing to follow a fairly strict, religious course is just as valid as your path." Almost invariably, that will be met by, "Well, no, because in your path, you tell other people that their course is wrong. That's not OK." So much for the concept that there is no wrong choice.

                "So you think I'm wrong."

                "Yes! And I think if you try to tell other people what to do, that's hurtful and dictatorial."

                "So it's wrong to tell people that what they're doing is wrong."

                "Yes! Exactly!"

                "So then, is it wrong of you to tell me that I'm doing things wrong? You just did. Are you being hurtful and dictatorial by telling me that I should do things differently?"

                "No! I'm trying to get you to see that everyone else should choose their own path!"

                "But you think the path I've chosen is wrong."

                "You didn't choose it! You're doing what someone else tells you to do!"

                At that point, I can either go with, "But if you tell me to do something, and I do it, that's OK," or "So an opinion is only valid if no one else agrees with it? No one ever introduced you to the things that you believe?" Either one will make the other person angry.

                Usually, it will boil down to something that looks like, "It's OK for me to do certain things because my opinion is right. It's wrong for you to do those same things because your opinion is wrong."

                So exhausting. So annoying. So erroneous.

                Frequently, it's best to just stop the discussion, because nothing productive will come of it.

                It's not just the biggies – religion, politics, child rearing – that get folks up in arms. I once had someone badger me for months because I like a particular chain restaurant's chili. ("They use the burgers that have cooked too long to sell! You're OK with paying to eat overcooked beef that they couldn't sell as burgers?" Answer: "YES. And it's a heck of a lot less wasteful than throwing it out!") When my daughter was getting married, I listened to more than one person criticize her choice to have matching attendants' dresses by saying, "Doesn't she know that matchy-matchy went out of style?" YES. Yes, she knew. She just didn't care, and it was HER wedding. Say that to certain people, and you'll get quite the reaction. Apparently, in some circles, it's more shocking to be willfully unfashionable than it is to disagree on whether or not there's a God.

                I always thought that people shared ideas so that they'd understand one another. I am never offended if you don't agree with me. I am offended if you question my intelligence or if you browbeat me with the intent to change my mind. So often, with people I know personally and people I read about or see on TV, I see shades of those two girls whose age was barely into double digits; people get increasingly angry if they can't change your mind. They've explained the error of your ways to you. If you persist in holding your opinion instead of changing to theirs, well, that's obviously a sign of low intelligence and almost criminal stubbornness. That attitude makes me angry. It always will.

                I notice, too, that many people attempt to avoid the unpleasantness of being adult enough to disagree peacefully by caving in. Faced with a loved one who is doing something that they always believed to be wrong, this type of person will think, "My loved one is intelligent, well intentioned and well informed. Therefore, if they disagree with me, I must be wrong." That's ridiculous. It is totally possible to be intelligent, well intentioned, well informed and wrong. Do you know anyone – ANYONE – with whom you haven't the slightest disagreement on ANY subject?

                We, collectively, seem to have lost the knowledge that you can truly, deeply care about someone, even love them, and consider them to be wrong at the same time.

                Sometimes, someone will attempt to show me the error of my ways by saying, ever so gently, "You know that most people disagree with you, right?" as though 1. I didn't know, and 2. I will now immediately conform to the majority simply because there are more of them. Really, folks? What's that about?

                It also ticks me off when people ask, "Aren't you aware that your opinion causes other people pain?" Yes. Yes, I am aware. Do you know what my first clue was? The fact that the opinions of other people often cause ME pain. I understand this to be a normal part of the human condition, not a reason for forced conformity.

                Think about it: according to many religious teachings, including those of my religion, certain behaviors will not necessarily cause pain in this life, but will cause eternal separation from loved ones in the next life. If you're in my life, I want you to continue to be there. It's an act of amazing restraint on my part that I don't burst into tears every time I see someone doing something that I believe to be wrong.  If I flung myself, sobbing, at the feet of every person who, say, drank alcohol in my presence, wailing, "I don't want to lose you!" people would think I was a loon, and the relationship wouldn't last long.

NOT flinging myself down sobbing doesn't mean that I agree with you. It means that certain aspects of your life are none of my business, so I stay out of them. I expect you to return the favor.

I see frequent complaints on Facebook that, "Someone un-friended me because of something I said!" Just as frequently, I see status posts that say, "If I ever offend you, or if you want to talk about (insert topic), please unfriend me!" While anyone in my life is certainly free to dump me at any time, and I will never try to keep someone in my life who doesn't want to be there, I find the idea that we can only be friends with people we agree with to be sad – and juvenile.

Someone tried to explain that to me once by saying, "I just can't be friends with someone who has opinions that I find to be morally wrong." I wonder if they thought about the fact that their opinions were offensive to me, and yet I didn't feel the need to jettison the relationship.

If they didn't, they should have.