Growing up, my family and I drank tea at our round dinner table every evening. As we sipped tea, we\u2019d talk about how our day was going and share stories, big or small.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One evening when I was 13, my grandmother was telling my mom and me a story about a man whose anger issues were affecting his relationships.<\/p>\n
My mother and I argued that anger couldn\u2019t excuse his bad behavior or its impact on his family.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My grandmother had a more empathetic view. She thought the emotion itself was making him act terribly. It wasn\u2019t his true self acting this way, so it wasn\u2019t entirely his fault.<\/p>\n
None of us changed our minds, but that wasn\u2019t the point. Growing up, arguments like these became a tradition.<\/p>\n
My grandmother, who grew up in a rural village in Bangladesh with almost no access to technology and education, saw the world differently than my mom who was raised in the busy capital of Dhaka, Bangladesh.\u00a0<\/p>\n
My mom grew up in a stable, educated household, while my grandmother grew up in a place where education and family support were scarce.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Consequently, my mother\u2019s education consisted of books and family teachings, while my grandmother learned primarily from experience and the world around her.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Their perspectives often collided, but their disagreements never felt hostile.<\/p>\n
It was quite the opposite. <\/p>\n
Each disagreement revealed more about how they\u2019d grown up and how their experiences shaped their values. If anything, these disagreements inspired connection and curiosity.<\/p>\n
I quickly learned that when people disagree, they don\u2019t just share opinions \u2014 they share worlds.<\/p>\n
When I imagined college, I imagined these disagreements happening often. In classrooms, study sessions, dorm hallways and late-night hangouts, I pictured conversations that felt like portals into people\u2019s lives, opening doors to knowledge and truths beyond my own.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But in reality, these conversations are a lot rarer than I expected.<\/p>\n
Lehigh is the most diverse place I\u2019ve ever been, yet paradoxically, it often feels like we\u2019re all the same.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Regarding topics like artificial intelligence in education or social issues dominating the news, I often hear the same perspective echoing across rooms. It seems as though there\u2019s a mutual agreement or unanimity everywhere.<\/p>\n
But given how divided the world is, I know that can\u2019t possibly be true. People are scared to disagree, and I understand why.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to worry about being misunderstood, judged or shunned by people we care about. But I think we lose something essential to human connection when we avoid disagreements.<\/p>\n
The people I feel closest to are the ones I openly disagree with \u2014 the people I trust enough to share differing opinions with, knowing it won\u2019t be a bridge that divides us, but one that connects us.\u00a0<\/p>\n
These moments pull back a curtain and allow me to learn about other\u2019s values, beliefs, childhood, aspirations and experiences I otherwise wouldn\u2019t have known. They allow me to truly know them \u2014 not just who they are, but also what made them that way.<\/p>\n
My grandmother empathized with the man struggling with anger issues and saw it as a struggle, not because she was softer than me and my mom, but because she\u2019d seen it before and knew how it could affect people.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was a life experience that had shaped her values. If we hadn\u2019t disagreed and I hadn\u2019t asked why, I would\u2019ve never known about that part of her life.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the power of disagreement \u2014 it allows us to see the context behind people\u2019s thoughts. It allows us to understand each other\u2019s perspectives and put our preconceived notions aside.<\/p>\n
If we lose the ability to disagree, we also lose the ability to understand one another. We\u2019ll lose the ability to view thoughts and values from another\u2019s lens and will continue seeing everything through our own lens, limited by our experiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This can only lead to disconnect and division.<\/p>\n
So when I think back to disagreements over tea with my family, I remember them as moments that bonded and connected us. I think of them as moments that challenged me to think more deeply about people, especially those who think differently than I do.<\/p>\n
Maybe that\u2019s the beauty of disagreement. Listening and caring not because everyone thinks the same way, but because everyone doesn\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a world where people avoid being candid out of fear of judgement, we should try our best to muster the courage to speak our minds and listen to others without disparagement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I believe the world could benefit from disagreements that foster empathy, understanding and connection.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Growing up, my family and I drank tea at our round dinner table every evening. As we sipped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[3946,153,155,154,2362,4520],"class_list":{"0":"post-4886","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-4-min-read","9":"tag-bethlehem","10":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","11":"tag-bethlehem-news","12":"tag-diversity","13":"tag-edit-desk"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4886"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4886\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}