What I learned about Politics, about Myself, and about Respect - by living a "Year Of The Opposite"

Being less judgmental.

I initially launched into the Year Of The Opposite to shake up my routine and combat lingering depression from grief. While I expected the new challenges to serve as a mental and physical reboot, I didn't anticipate the full range of benefits.

Sure, learning new skills was a given, but what caught me off guard was how these fresh experiences connected me with diverse groups of people I'd never interacted with before.

For instance, I’d have to learn about the mechanics of the gun to get my concealed carry permit or I’d have to learn how to hold my golf club in order to strike a golf ball correctly for the first time. This was the obvious part.

But what I now realize is that there may have been an even bigger benefit: exposing me to new people & ideas.

By adopting new hobbies, work outs, religious groups, teachers, sports, and diets, I am getting introduced to tribes of people that are different from the tribes I historically surrounded myself with. These new tribes have their own languages, rituals, traditions, art, priests, and holy days. Golf has its own language. So does pickleball, antiquing, running, and so on.

It’s hard for someone to know what a Slice really feels like if they have never swung a club or to know what a runners-high is without running. Because of my Year Of The Opposite, I was now a part of countless new communities of people that I had rarely interacted with in the past.

Take this for example, most of my life I had never desired to own a gun, but as a part of my year of the opposite challenge I got my concealed carry pistol permit. As you can imagine, this introduced me to a lot of people that had different views than I did on a lot of topics.

Similarly, my ride along with Lansing police department gave me a first hand opportunity to see a tiny glimpse into policing and public safety. Or my experience going to church and donating to charities illuminated a world of people providing good deeds in the community that was invisible to me before.

Through my initiative, Year Of The Opposite, I've encountered an unprecedented number of new connections, experiences, and perspectives. Whether it's my involvement with the Rotary Club, participation in local boards, engagement in CEO roundtables, or attendance at a record number of tradeshows and professional development events, the journey has been incredibly enriching.

Yet, the privilege of immersing myself in diverse communities, exploring novel hobbies, and collaborating with new mentors and peers has compelled me to reevaluate many of my pre-existing beliefs. I came to realize that some of my convictions, though passionately held, lacked a robust foundation and were often not informed by firsthand experience.

Upon closer examination, it became evident that many of my viewpoints weren't genuinely my own. Rather, they were borrowed from others or were the result of impulsive judgments I had made at some point. From then on, I felt an inexplicable obligation to maintain and defend these stances.

Now, these very "opinions" are being rigorously tested by individuals with firsthand experiences that differ significantly from my own, forcing me to reconsider and refine my understanding of various topics.

For instance, before I owned a gun and I didn’t know much about the concealed carry permitting process. I used to think that concealed carry classes were for people that “just loved their guns too much.” But when I talked to Michelle Rogers and learned that she felt her concealed carry license was the only protection she had against the person who had stabbed her 7 times and left her for dead, it changed my view. I now realized that some people had a very real threat that they needed to be able to defend themselves against. I gained a new appreciation for a perspective that I was completely ignorant about.

Or as another example, when I was growing up we didn’t have hunters in our family and I thought that hunters were cruel people that were needlessly harming adorable animals. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to shoot a defenseless animal when they could just go to the grocery store and buy some hamburger.

I would question the hunters motivations and unfairly assign to them a desire to inflict death on other creatures. I’m embarrassed to say this because of how wrong I was obviously. Now I realize that hunters are the very people that defend and protect the wildlife that they hunt and that hunters have a deep respect and appreciation for the food system. Arguably, more so that non-hunters. I had it completely backwards.

Or one final example, before my Year Of The Opposite, I was a news addict. I would regularly tune into the local TV news at 5 and 6pm and everyday I would spring out of bed and rush to find out which new political outrage was happening that I should be angry about. It literally seemed like everyday there were multiple things that I needed to project my anger about.

• Someone said something wrong and they needed to be punished for it.

• A terrible tragedy happened somewhere in the world and I needed to have an opinion on it.

• Some political actor is doing something that is going to destroy the world or our country.

At first when I gave up the news, I felt like I was missing out. Someone would come up to me and say “Did you hear about XYZ?” and I would feel a bit ashamed when I confessed that I knew nothing about that topic. But what I learned is that I wasn’t missing out on anything.

I’ve found that if a topic is truly important to your life, you will hear about it at some point. It will have a direct impact on you at some point. But most things you hear about on the news, will never impact you at all. That’s kinda how the news works.

The news is always talking about things as they happen in real time. As Naval says: “The media’s job is to make every problem, your problem.” But most of the topics that the media wants us to have an opinion on are things that may never happen or in most cases will have no impact on our lives. For instance:

• Does knowing about the latest wildfire in California impact your life?

• Does knowing about the latest school shooting impact your life?

• Does knowing about the latest bill that’s going through congress impact you?

• Does knowing about the latest war in another country change your life?

• Does knowing about a family dying in a car accident impact your life?

In most cases, these events are not going to impact your life at all. And if they are going to impact your life, most likely you will hear about them in ways other than the news media.

This made me ask myself a question: Why was I tuning into the news? Was it to be more informed or was it to feel like I belonged to a team and had a side to cheer alongside?

It took awhile for me to discover, but the answer for me was obvious. I was a news junkie so that I could feel connected to a team that I could cheer with and so that I could identify the “others” who had the “wrong” opinion on these various topics. News was my Sport.

When a school shooting would happen the conversation would quickly divide into: Who thinks all guns should be banned and who thinks the solution is giving kindergarten teachers assault rifles? I was asked to pick a side. NOW!

When Russia invades Ukraine: Do you think Putin is a hero or a murderer? Decide now!

When a wildfire breaks out: Do you think the world is going to end from climate change in 20 years or are you a climate denier? Pick a side!

Me being someone that is online a lot and a frequent user of social media, it made my righteousness even easier to spread and demonstrate to others. I could spend hours online arguing in the comments with complete strangers about the complicated history of Russia, The USA, the Ukraine, and NATO.

I would quickly identify the other person as either on-my-side and correct or not-on-my-side and obviously wrong. Most likely I would even categorize them into groups based on that one belief.

For instance, if they believed that the world is going to end in 20 years due to climate change, they probably also voted for Biden, had taken 20 booster shots, had a Ukrainian flag in their window, and never shot a pistol.

If the person thought that the solution to school shootings was to arm the teachers with AR15’s, they probably also voted for Trump, drove a pickup, and didn’t recycle.

Thinking back on it, it was so gross! I was categorizing people and pre judging them without even knowing them. There is a word for that: Prejudice.

But what I was doing, I would argue, is what many people are doing everyday. We see someone with pink hair and we lump them into a group. We see someone with a MAGA hat and we lump them into a group. We see someone with a rainbow bumper sticker and we do the same. But these generalizations are terrible!

Something beautiful that happened to me in my Year Of The Opposite is that I got to spend real quality time with people that I had never hung out with before. They had different religious beliefs, different hobbies, different cultural traditions, different political beliefs, different holidays, and different perspectives.

It wasn’t easy for me to write these people off and discount them as “wrong” or “evil” because I had developed a relationship with them. I had developed respect for them.

These people had often generously donated their time and experience to teach me about a new topic or to learn a new skill. They were my new teachers, my new teammates, and my new friends. I couldn’t just write them off as an “evil person” simply because they wore a MAGA hat. How could I? I knew their children. I knew their grandma. I knew that they had spent the last 3 months carrying for a child that wasn’t their own so that the child could avoid entering the foster system and potentially be reunited with their mother that was attempting to break free of her drug addiction.

I couldn't easily label someone as evil or beyond redemption for wearing a MAGA hat, especially when they've done something as noble as rescuing a child from a difficult situation.

In no way am I cured completely. But this experience taught me a huge lesson about how prejudiced I was being. I try to do better now. I try to resist my temptation to prejudge people and group them into neat buckets. I try to reserve my judgement and be more accepting of other people’s ideas. I try to be more skeptical of my own certainty about my opinions and my positions.

There is an easy way to do this: spend time with people that are different from you. It will help you learn to respect them and to appreciate their perspective on topics.

I’m still not great at this but I’m trying and the Year Of The Opposite helped make me a little more understanding and appreciative of the wide variety of opinions that others hold. It’s one of the most beautiful things that has come out of this experience.