Latest / Your People: Finding Community, Friendship & Belonging / When Politics Push You Away: Finding Belonging Beyond Ideology | Your People
Transcript
- There is a specific kind of silence that falls over a dinner table when someone mentions an election, and it feels less like peace and more like the air has been sucked out of the room. I need you to know that if you’ve ever felt your stomach drop while looking at your best friend’s face, you are not alone in this ache. Let’s linger there for a second. That silence I just described? It’s heavy. It’s thick. And for people like me, who used to spend my days designing neighborhoods with green spaces and walkable streets, it feels like a failure of infrastructure. I spent years trying to build community through zoning laws and park benches, thinking if I just got the layout right, everyone would fit together nicely. But here is the truth I learned the hard way: community isn’t built on blueprints. It’s built in the messy, unplanned moments. The hallway chats. The shared grief. The random acts of kindness when no one is watching. And sometimes, those moments collide with our deepest beliefs in ways that shake us to our core. That’s the quiet part out loud. We tell ourselves we’re fine. We smile. We change the subject to the weather or the food or the dog. But inside, there is a fracture. It’s a tiny crack in the foundation of a relationship you thought was solid. You look at your friend, this person who knows how you take your coffee and what song makes you cry, and you wonder: do they see me? Do they see the values that hold me up? Or have I become a stranger in my own life because of what I believe? This isn’t about winning an argument. This isn’t about being right. This is about the terrifying realization that two people who love each other can inhabit completely different moral universes. And when those universes collide, the gravity pulls them apart. Where did you feel that in your body? For many of us, it’s in the chest. A tightness. A heaviness. Maybe it’s a knot in the stomach when the conversation turns to policy, to justice, to the future we want for our children. I remember sitting across from a colleague once, someone I’d trusted for five years, when she voiced an opinion that directly contradicted my understanding of human dignity. I didn’t say anything. I just stared at my wine glass. I watched the bubbles rise and burst, one by one, and I felt myself shrinking. I wanted to disappear. Not because I was angry, but because I was afraid. Afraid that if I spoke, I would lose her. And if I stayed silent, I would lose myself. That tension is exhausting. It drains you. It makes every interaction feel like walking on eggshells made of glass. We live in a culture that tells us we need to be compatible with everyone we love. Same tastes. Same politics. Same everything. But that’s a lie. Human connection is rarely that clean. If we only surrounded ourselves with people who agreed with us perfectly, we’d never grow. We’d never be challenged. We’d never see the world through anyone else’s eyes. But there is a difference between disagreement and incompatibility. Disagreement is healthy. It keeps us sharp. Incompatibility happens when the gap becomes too wide to bridge without losing pieces of yourself. When your friend’s views stop feeling like a difference of opinion and start feeling like a denial of your humanity. That’s when you have to ask yourself some hard questions. Questions that don’t have easy answers. Let’s talk about radical empathy. Not the kind that means agreeing with someone you fundamentally oppose. But the kind that means listening to understand, not to fix. To respond. When I hear someone express a view that hurts me, my first instinct is often to defend. To protect my values. To shut down the threat. But Katharine, the former urban planner who burned out, knows that shutting down doesn’t build bridges. It builds walls. So instead, I try to listen. I try to find the fear behind the anger. The hurt behind the hardness. Often, people’s political views are rooted in their own experiences of pain or insecurity. Does that excuse harm? No. Absolutely not. But does it help me navigate the relationship with more grace? Yes. It allows me to separate the person from the ideology. It reminds me that my friend is still the person who helped me move into my first apartment. Who held me when my mother died. Who laughed at my terrible jokes. Those things are real. They matter. So what do you do? How do you stay connected without betraying yourself? You set boundaries. And not the passive-aggressive kind. The clear, honest kind. You say, 'I love you, but I can’t talk about this right now.' You say, 'This topic hurts me, and I need to step away.' It’s not punishment. It’s protection. It’s saying, 'I value our friendship, but I also value my peace.' And sometimes, despite your best efforts, the gap is too wide. Sometimes, you realize that the cost of staying is too high. That the distance between your values and theirs is a canyon you cannot cross. And that is okay. It is heartbreaking, yes. But it is also necessary. You are allowed to outgrow people. You are allowed to choose yourself. Community is a verb, not just a noun. It requires action. It requires courage. And sometimes, the most courageous thing you can do is let go. If you are in the middle of this struggle, please know this: you are not broken. Your relationships are not failures. You are navigating the complex, beautiful, painful reality of being human in a divided world. Keep showing up imperfectly. Keep loving fiercely. And keep seeking out the people who make space for your whole self. The ones who don’t demand you shrink. The ones who celebrate your differences as much as your similarities. They are out there. And until you find them, hold onto the memories of what worked. Hold onto the laughter. Hold onto the love. Let that be enough for now. You don’t have to have all the answers today. Just take a breath. Listen to your heart. And trust that you will find your way back to belonging, even if it looks different than before. Take care of yourself, sweet friend. I’m holding space for you. Until next time, keep lingering in the moments that matter. Love you.