Being honest about uncomfortable conversations vs. dangerous ones

I was asked after my second TEDx Talk something to the effect of, “What happens when the person across from me is actively trying to take away my rights or my freedoms? Why should we seek out those conversations?”

I’ve thought a lot about this question and similar questions I’ve gotten since, and I think it’s important to make a distinction between uncomfortable conversations and dangerous ones.

I’m not advocating for you to seek out or go into dangerous situations — into dangerous confrontations with people where the situation may be physically dangerous or sometimes perhaps emotionally dangerous.

But what I am advocating for is for you to seek out and enter into uncomfortable situations — those situations where you may not feel direct danger or threat, but where the situation may be morally uncomfortable or ideologically distressing where your views and your beliefs are challenged and they give you an icky, gross, or perhaps even angry feelings.

And you have to be honest here. You have to be honest about labeling things uncomfortable versus dangerous.

Is something truly dangerous, or is it simply uncomfortable and you want to run away from it?

And I understand I’m coming at this from a position of privilege. I’m coming at it from a perspective where I will feel less threatened in certain situations than, say, people of a different race or people of a different gender. That’s true, and I acknowledge that.

But even so, I’ve had many conversations with people who look very different from me and come from very different backgrounds than me, where they’re saying the same things and they’re advocating for the same approaches that I am.

So when I say I want you to label things correctly and be honest with yourself, I want you to ask, “While it may feel threatening to me, is it actually dangerous, or is it simply uncomfortable?”

If it is uncomfortable, then you have to go in with a different approach.

Ask yourself, “Do I have control in this situation? Do I have the ability to unilaterally force this person across from me who believes differently than I do — who’s ideologically threatening my way of life or my beliefs or my freedoms — do I have the unilateral control to force them to believe as I believe or to do the things that I want them to do?”

If the answer is no, then you have to get more curious about them and try to understand them better to uncover areas of common ground. If you don’t, you will always feel the specter of disharmony lurking over your life.

My second TEDx Talk was all about peacemaking versus peacekeeping.

Peacekeeping is pushing yourself away from uncomfortable conversations and pretending like those things don’t exist or just wishing for the control to force those things out of existence. And that so rarely happens for so many of us.

And a peacemaker seeks out those uncomfortable conversations. They seek out those uncomfortable situations — usually not the dangerous ones — where they can begin to make a difference by holding space for someone by asking questions and by assuming positive intent.

If you adopted the mindset of a peacemaker, how would that change your approach to uncomfortable conversations?

Yes, there is a difference between uncomfortable conversations and dangerous ones. And I am not advocating for us to step into danger. But I am advocating for us to step into uncomfortable conversations more and change our approach.

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