Growing up I watched a TV show called Rawhide, co-starring a then very young Clint Eastwood. I don’t remember much about the program other than it had to do with driving cattle across the American west. But while I’m fuzzy on the plot lines of that gripping series, I do remember the show’s catchy theme song. This stanza on the recommended treatment of cattle stands out:

“Don’t try to understand them

Just rope, throw and brand 'em

Soon we’ll be living high and wide.”

I’m not sure exactly what it means to “live high and wide,” but the first two lines are pretty unambiguous. They also strike me as a disturbingly accurate description of how we approach our national discourse. We make little, if any, effort to truly understand our "cultural other,” preferring instead to tie them up in easy-to-understand packages branded with searing, one-dimensional labels: trumper vs. never-trumper, vaxxer vs. anti-vaxxer, masker vs. anti-masker, spend-thrift socialist vs. corrupt, greedy capitalist, etc. etc. etc. Simplistic labels that lead to simplistic — and counter-productive — conversations. 

Now, I don’t know about you, but I find this cattle analogy a little sobering. We can — we must — do better. And for many of us, the Thanksgiving holiday is a wonderful opportunity to do so.

Wonderful, but also challenging. Which is why, should you find yourself in a family gathering that puts you in close proximity to those on the “other side” of whatever issue, I’d like to offer a little advice. It has to do with setting our boundaries. Not the kind of boundaries that establish the limits of what we’ll tolerate from others, but the kind that establish the limits of what we’ll tolerate from ourselves. Let me give an example.

When my son and I embarked on our cross-country conversation road tour shortly after the 2016 presidential election, we talked to a number of people we strongly disagreed with. Yet the conversations were not only civil, they were productive, and not once did we fall into the ever-popular “let-me-tell-you-how-it-really-is” mode of interaction. (Well, there was that one time…but I’ll get to that later.)

Now I can be as argumentative and defensive as anybody, and I’m sure my son would claim the same for himself. So what made the difference on that road trip? It came down to one simple thing: We’d made a decision, in advance, not to be that way. It was outside the boundary of our established intention, which was to listen and learn from people who saw things differently from us. And you can’t listen and learn if you’re arguing and defending.

For this kind of boundary-setting approach to be viable, however, it requires sufficient motivation to follow through. My son and I didn’t make our decision to listen and learn out of a desire to accommodate anyone or even to avoid conflict. Had that been our motivation we would have failed miserably. We made that decision because we truly believed it was the best thing we could do — that only by understanding the nature of our divide could we then understand how to mend it. 

If you share that belief, then here’s my suggestion for how to approach the holidays: give yourself permission to set the same boundary we did. If helpful, you might even imagine you’ve been on a road trip like ours. It’s been a long journey and the opportunity to talk to those on the other side have been few and far between. But then, out of the blue, someone invites you to a tremendously diverse family gathering — (had that happened to us, we would have been thrilled!) — an unbelievably rich opportunity to engage, one on one, with your “cultural other.” To hear firsthand what they believe and value. To hear the stories that helped shape those beliefs and values. And to celebrate, quietly, inside your head, if at some point they ask the same questions of you. But whether they do or not, you’ll leave that family gathering energized — a side effect of venturing into new territory, of opening yourself up to a different perspective.

Now I mentioned that not every interaction on our road trip went smoothly. This was the exception that proves the rule. We’d arrived in Washington, D.C. the day of Trump’s inauguration — protesters and supporters were everywhere. At one point I saw my son talking to a man who seemed very heated and upset, and for some reason I thought I was needed, that my son might have gotten in over his head. That was my first mistake. The second mistake was thinking my trip had given me insights and tools for “handling” this guy — not to listen and learn from him, but to challenge and correct him, and to ask clever questions that would reveal to him the errors in his thinking. 

It was not a good encounter, but it did finally drive home for me the lesson of the entire road trip. The purpose of listening and learning to the ‘other’ isn’t to get better at influencing them. It’s how we influence them — by demonstrating, not demanding, the attitude and behaviors we’d like to see.

So that’s what I have to offer, along with this special treat: A recording of the Rawhide jingle. A warning: it might stick in your head. But maybe that’s a good thing. A reminder of how not to treat each other this holiday season, or any season.

Have a great Thanksgiving.

ps: If you'd like to read my son's reflection on our road trip four years later, you'll find it here.