Neither man was wearing pants.
I have no idea why two men would engage in a serious conversation without wearing pants, even in the gym locker room. I had to walk between them to get to my locker, an awkward, "excuse me" as I stepped between the two men. They were talking politics. They seemed to know one another.
I noticed that one of the men was sharing his views quite openly and honestly, seemingly assuming that those around him would also agree. The other man certainly seemed to, but he wasn't saying much. He was semi-agreeing as the man went on.
When the second pantsless man walked away, the first–the one who was the loudest–continued his lecture/dialogue with me. I didn't completely disagree with the man, but I didn't completely agree either. Nevertheless, in the moment, and largely because he had no pants on, I pointed out my areas of agreement and made my way to the shower.
When I returned, there were two other men talking. One of them may have been there during the first man's rant, and possibly joined in to the discussion at that point, but it's not really relevant. What is relevant is that neither of these men were wearing pants either, and I wondered if perhaps I was missing something? Nevertheless, I did more listening than watching.
Which, ironically, is when I saw the problem: neither of them were listening to the other.
The first man was on a rant about what he believed would fix the problem in America. The second man patiently waited his turn. He appeared to be listening, because that's what "waiting" looks like in a conversation. But waiting to speak is far different than listening to what is being said. When the first man finished his passionate appeal, the other man calmly asked a question, which, as an observer, was a significant check to the first man's opinion. Instead of listening and admitting that the second man had a point, the first man dug his heels in, tried to walk around the point, tried to ignore the point, didn't answer the man's question, and on and on the two pantsless men went in their deaf dance.
Needless to say, neither man saw the validity of the others point (even though they both had one), neither sought to recalibrate their opinion based on the other persons input (even though they both needed recalibration), and both of them reframed the other persons comments to make them look silly and foolish, rather than pointing out the areas of positivity and agreement. In other words, they weren't listening.
We humans (or perhaps, we 21st century Americans) have an extremely hard time admitting that we might be wrong about our sincerely held beliefs.
But admitting that we might be wrong is the only way to listen, and listening is the only way we'll actually start to be able to solve any of our problems.
If we are going to listen to one another, it requires that we are willing to admit that we might not have all the information, all the solutions, we may not have thought of everything, we may not have a universal perspective that allows us to see how things are at all moments in all times and places. But for us to do that means that we are willing to allow a challenge to our ideas; we are willing to talk to people who will push back not just so we can convince them, but so that we can hear them.
Maybe you've noticed, but Social Media is about telling, it's not about listening. That's surely fueled our propensity to ignore those with a different perspective and unite only with those who agree. We see something we like, we repost, share, like, quote, copy, whatever. We see something that we don't like, well, most of us just tell the author/our personal friend on Facebook that they are an idiot, leave a vitriolic comment, and the discussion is over.
Maybe I'm wrong–but I'd be willing to bet that if we all hit the pause button and tried to listen more than speak, and ask more than tell, we might find that we have the same goals, the same dreams, and maybe just different paths to get there. We're also likely to find that the right path forward is somewhere in the middle of our views–but we'll never find that middle ground if we don't start by admitting that we need each other to come up with the right solutions.