Most people are pretty lovely

once you get offline and talk to them in real life

I had the recent good fortune of traveling to Nashville for a wonderful work event for my husband and as always happens, I met some really lovely people along the way. I decided to share some of these experiences in an effort to dispel the myth peddled by too many in the media that we all hate each other, that we can’t get along, that people with different opinions can’t even talk to one another let alone be friends. It is easy to see that none of this true once we get offline and talk to real people in the real world about real stuff.

I travelled alone to Tennessee since my husband was already down there and my trip started with a delightful Uber ride to Boston’s Logan Airpot. The reason it was delightful was my Uber driver, Rony.

He is a lovely man and father from Haiti whose contagious belly laugh I can still hear in my mind. We chatted the whole way up to Boston about all kinds of things: family, our state of Rhode Island, America, schools, faith and what he loves about America and what he doesn’t like so much.

He immigrated here solely because of the opportunity this country offered to provide for his family here. “Economics” lured him here. He said he loves that anyone and everyone can succeed here if they want to work. He eventually brought his mother along too to live in his home here. A downside he sees in this country is the dispersement of family—that even immediate family members often live far away from one another. He prefers the closer knit family and multi-generational family structure he left behind in Haiti though he also acknowledges that economic opportunity is often what leads to family members moving away.

He is very big on the belief that we should respect the opinions of others and he said [paraphrasing here]: “I respect your opinions and you respect mine and we are good. But once you try to push opinions that I don’t share into my home, we have a problem.”

Rony is a man of very strong Christian faith. It would be fair to say he wears it on his sleeve. It’s easy to see why he objects to many of the messages being pushed on his children and family by way of the schools and the culture at large. I share many of his concerns.

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Once I got through security at the airport, I had a lot of time to kill because of members of my family’s ominous warnings about tunnel construction and traffic and the usual scare tactics they employ to make me leave earlier for the airport.

I was TWO HOURS early.

I sat down to have breakfast at the counter of an airport restaurant and within minutes, a very chatty and friendly woman had sat beside me. She looked at my Eggs Benedict and immediately ordered the same thing because of how good it looked—it was delicious. It was obvious that she was very up for a conversation. I’m often that overly chatty person so it was actually a relief to see someone else who also enjoyed talking to strangers.

She was a mother of two from Cambridge, MA who was en route to the Dominican Republic. We talked about kids, family, upcoming graduations and she made a few jokes about her ex-husband. I was able to surmise early on in the conversation that she was probably quite politically liberal—the tell was when told a story about her kid’s first college experience being “too conservative” (in Chicago!) because the students (and their families) were critical of places “full of girls who talk about wanting to save the world.” As she talked she had a “can you believe that?” look on her face and proceeded to say “I thought wanting to save the world was a good thing.” I smiled. If I had known her better, I might have enjoyed a bit of banter about why some may find those types insufferable but what was the point? Her kid had transferred and was happier now and that was a good thing. Plus, we were two strangers enjoying each other’s company over breakfast and I didn’t care about her political or ideological leanings anyway.

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As I made my way to the gate—still annoyingly early—a mom holding a sweet toddler boy in her arms stopped me in the airport to compliment me on my shirt. It was more of a tunic actually. Since there was a funny story behind it involving my boss and a marketplace in Egypt, I shared it with her (and apologized to her husband since I knew he definitely didn’t care and wanted to keep walking!)

Once in Nashville, it was more of the same in terms of lovely people. My husband and I went out to dinner one night in downtown to celebrate my birthday (50, gulp!) and our Uber driver on the way home told us all about how he had just given notice at his day job because he had been picked up by a bunch of bars on Broadway (the main thoroughfare in Nashville) to play live music throughout the week and they wanted him to start right away—he explained that for singer/songwriters trying to make it in Nashville, this is a big break. Hubs and I were of course so happy for him—and we kept saying it.

In celebration of my 50th, Hubs had surprised me with a 90 minute massage at our hotel. So fancy! My masseuse was from Germany and had met her husband while he was deployed there. They now live in Nashville (after a move from Texas) and have two young kids. She was delightful and so were the hot stones she used on me!

You might be wondering why I even wrote this piece and I think the answer is this: I’m on social media a lot for work (and due to my own addiction to news, let’s be honest) and I’m also out in the real world talking to regular people all the time. I’m troubled by the seemingly nonstop claims that “we are so divided” and “we can’t get along” and “we need a national divorce” and “people who disagree can’t be friends.” Yes, it’s obviously true that there are massive political and cultural divisions at the moment—I live and breathe those divisions professionally in the context of what is and is not appropriate in our K-12 schools. And yes, it is true that our response to COVID did permanent damage to a lot of relationships. So did the “Trump era.” But it is also true that people who disagree on lots of things get along just fine. I couldn’t tell you the political party or preferred candidates of a single parent on my sons’ baseball team this season. Not a single one. We don’t talk about that stuff. We talk about baseball. And our kids. And upcoming school events. And how we have no food at home and don’t know what to make for dinner and we’ll probably get take-out again and how my cute dress is from TJ Maxx and the great book that so and so’s mom just read and….you get it. Just normal and random parent stuff. The dads usually talk a lot less about “stuff” and a lot more about the the game—the strike zone, how deep the outfield is playing, whether or not a bunt is coming, if we should pinch run etc. In fact, now that I think about it, I’ve been at the baseball field a lot this past week watching my own son’s games and my friend’s sons games and I haven’t heard Trump’s name once even though he was just indicted. No one is talking about that at the ball field.

Politics is not an identity for most people. This is easy to see once we put down the phone and close the laptop and turn off cable news.

And yes, I remain convinced that most people are pretty lovely.