On civility and being brave

We can be thankful for new school years and kids of every age who are beginning anew, whatever grade they are going into, and for the faculty and staff who welcome them with open arms.

In the La Conner Schools insert in last week’s Weekly News, Superintendent Whitney Meissner wrote “The start of a school year is a great time to bring curiosity, kindness, hope and optimism forward. ... It’s a time to believe in ourselves and others and imagine the endless possibilities of what can be, what might be.”

That is sentiment our leaders in every jurisdiction – local, state and federal – can and need to be expressing every day of every season. It is the goal of this year’s “Civil Discourse in the Public Arena: Effective Solutions for Everyday Use” workshops sponsored by Skagit County Dispute Resolution Center of the Volunteers of America and the region’s League of Women Voters.

Introducing the workshop in Sedro-Woolley last Thursday the League’s Wende Sanderson said, “We can find ways to build bridges of trust and respect as … we collaborate to work on solutions to sticky problems in Skagit County.” These workshops are to help people become more self-aware of conflicts within themselves, to understand that conflict is natural, and that conflict is part of the institutions of which we are all a part.

For problems – and they exist in spades, considering just the economic and environmental spheres – to be solved and possibilities to be pursued, everyone, with all our differing perspectives, must stay in conversation and work toward mutual solutions.

Consultant Mary Dumas has called workshop participants brave for being willing to talk to others with whom they don’t agree.

Of course, people of goodwill will disagree. Still, either we work together anyway, or we splinter into our siloed factions.

Meissner and civil discourse sponsors are not promoting final answers, but an approach, a process for growing into our shared reality. In the schools, that ongoing process ends in the result years later of adult citizens participating in their communities.

Meissner wrote of meeting with high schoolers last spring and asking “what they thought a good ... motto for La Conner Schools should be. Almost instantly, and with one voice, they said, ‘Be Brave ‘ It’s such a simple and beautiful sentiment.”

She ends: “What better way to start a year than that? Let’s Be Brave together.”

That is exactly what we must be, here in La Conner, throughout our state and very much nationally. As small democrats participating in our republic, we need the courage to listen, be patient, look people in the eye, nod and maybe respectfully disagree.

There is no denying or papering over our differences. There is the necessity of working together through our differences to get to the results that ensure we all survive, even thrive into our certainly uncertain future.

Yes, let’s be brave together, especially with people with whom we are not seeing eye to eye.