A gleeful, far-right conservative and a glum, bleeding-heart liberal walk into a coffee shop…

Sounds like a set-up for a joke, right? But it was no joke when I made a bet with someone I hadn’t seen in years over who’d win the most recent presidential election. If his candidate won (a candidate I couldn’t stand, whose campaign promises made me angry and afraid), I’d pony up and buy him breakfast at the café of his choice. But if my smart and oh-so-capable candidate prevailed, he’d be the one paying for my bacon and eggs. Confident in the obvious superiority of my highly qualified candidate, I made the bet.

I was wrong. Which is why I found myself in a downtown coffeeshop a few weeks after the election to break bread with someone I’d nearly unfriended on Facebook several years ago.

We hadn’t seen each other in more than a decade. Bob (not his real name) reminded me that we’d first met when I was co-managing the design firm at which I’d worked for nearly 20 years. A health insurance executive, Bob had come in to pitch us on how we might consider self-insuring our firm. I’d forgotten about that meeting, thinking instead that Bob and I had met on a board where we’d served together for several years. That shared board assignment, as I recalled, wasn’t always easy. Our age and gender, our management styles, our sense of humor—in fact, our approach toward most everything, politics included, was very different, even polar-opposite. So the fact that Bob and I hadn’t chummed around together after we’d completed our board terms and, years later, both retired was more than understandable.

As we were confirming the details of our meet-up, Bob warned me that I might not recognize him. And he was right. In my mind, Bob was still the self-confident business executive who’d held strong opinions he wasn’t afraid to share. After he left the business world, Bob remained uncompromising about his freely shared beliefs, becoming a fierce keyboard warrior and challenging my every political comment on Facebook. Bob often posted his own political diatribes, which often sounded to me a lot like the questionable content I’d hear or see on Fox. He’d also send me articles he’d gotten from “media” outlets and websites featuring headlines and stories like the one claiming that Michelle Obama practiced witchcraft in the Whitehouse. (Which would’ve been pretty cool, had it been true. I mean, whatever works.)

Anyway, channeling my inner Ted Lasso, I left my judgement in my car and entered the coffeeshop carrying my purse and some emergent curiosity. Bob was sitting in a chair near the entrance looking like a faded copy of what I’d remembered. Gone was the heavyset guy who filled up a room with his presence and his opinions. This smaller and more gaunt version struggled to his feet, and then struggled even more to walk up the four steps into the dining room. The savvy business exec was replaced with a much older and physically weaker man, his remaining wisps of gray hair peeking out from under his cap. “I didn’t wear a MAGA hat,” he said, smiling and pointing toward his head. But he did so without a trace of self-righteousness; not even a waft of “Hah! I told you so!” Gone was the snarling guy I’d experienced on Facebook, replaced with a toothlessness that was both figurative and literal.

We sat down and I asked him to tell me about where he’d been and what he’d been doing since we last saw each other. He talked first about his past achievements as an insurance executive, most of which I already knew. But what I didn’t know was how his dad had died when he was a kid. How his mom had enrolled him in the Boy Scouts to keep him out of trouble. How he’d been able to attend Marquette High due to, he suspected, the generosity of a local attorney, a kind man who became his mentor, who took Bob to business meetings where he’d introduce him as “my fourth son.” As I asked Bob more questions, I found I was genuinely interested in learning the answers. Bob happily obliged, meandering down memory lane without a political stop in sight. And when he landed on the 80^th birthday party he had planned for himself at the country club where he’d long been a member, his mood became somber. The party never happened, he told me, because his wife’s dementia got in the way. He fell silent.

I told him how my mom had suffered from dementia before she passed, and I asked if he wanted to talk more about his wife. He did. And so, for the next hour or so, I learned about how Bob had been supporting his wife through her health challenges. How he’d made appointments for her at the Mayo Clinic, appointments he cancelled at the last minute because, what was the point? To make her sit through test after test only to hear what he already knew and experienced every day for the past few years? I asked if he had any support, and he just smiled and shook his head. Then he said, “This is my support. Talking with people. And I have four more meetings this week.”

I told Bob about some of the resources on dementia that had helped me and my family, and I offered to email him more information. But mostly, we just shared our experiences—about how difficult it was, watching someone you’ve loved for more than half a century venture forward into that unknown place called dementia. A place those of us who have never been can never truly understand.

At some point, after he pushed away a plate of barely eaten eggs, we circled back to politics, which, after all, was the reason for our breakfast “meeting.” Sure enough, Bob soon echoed some of the same talking points and “alternative facts” I’d long heard spouted by far-right Fox entertainers and talking heads. When he took a breath, I asked if I could explain to him the fear and loathing I have for the incoming president by sharing stories of some people I know who are going to be seriously hurt if Trump makes good on his promises/threats. People like my friend Maria, a DACA recipient. Maria has two children who were born here. She owns a small business and has been paying taxes for years, as well as into Social Security, even though she will never benefit from it if things stay the same. Maria, I told Bob, is “a sitting duck,” her own description of herself as someone who voluntarily came out of the shadows years ago and followed all of the rules our government put in front of her. But now, that government knows exactly where to find her and her kids, and has openly stated that they’re coming for her.

“That’s wrong,” Bob replied, shaking his head. I shared another story, this one of a woman who works for Maria. She came here after her two brothers were killed by a Mexican cartel. Those same thugs tortured her and left her for dead. But she recovered and found her way to America. And now, she’s headed back to Mexico, to see the three kids she left behind when she ran, even if it means the cartel will most likely find and kill her. That, to her, is less of a risk than being sent to a U.S. detention camp, where her fate will be out of her hands.

“That’s wrong,” Bob said again. And yet: “But we have to do something to get rid of the illegals. Did you know that we’re spending millions putting them up at the Plaza Hotel in New York?”

“Do a Google search, Bob,” I wanted to shout. “Please, do a Google search.” The tape in my head continued: “. . . because if you do, you’ll find so much more than the half-truth-twisting soundbites offered by Fox and their ilk. Like the fact that people being housed in New York hotels are largely asylum-seekers who are running from life-threatening violence or persecution in their home countries. Or that many of them have been shipped unannounced to New York by Republican governors who are using these human beings as props for their anti-immigrant publicity stunts. Or that New York hotels are actually only used for a very limited time after emergency shelters are filled. And that the hotels being used are actually cheaper than the shelters.”

I found myself struggling internally with the strong and familiar urge to share these facts with him. To win the argument. But other than gently suggesting a Google search to test the veracity of his claims, I held my tongue. What seemed more important than winning the argument was recognizing the common values I was surprised to find we shared. What mattered more than schooling him with facts was recognizing what may have served as the fuel for his previous Facebook snarkiness, for what I thought were his value-less political opinions. As he talked that morning, I began to feel something I never imagined feeling for Bob: empathy. I still don’t agree with his far-right views and I probably never will. But hearing his story and listening to his pain over the situation he finds himself in had a profound impact on me. I found myself getting angry at the pundits and politicians who were taking advantage of his pain by lying to him, by trying to make him feel afraid and angry in order to win his vote. Bob’s current reality appeared to be one he probably never imagined when he was a much younger and more in-charge version of himself. At the very least, listening to Bob reminded me of some things I have long believed: that everyone has problems. That no one gets through life unscathed, unhurt, unafraid and untested by something they’d much rather avoid but can rarely or successfully dodge. That far too often, we keep secret our worst and most profound moments of fear and pain. And from what I can see, that’s when the worst damage occurs.

As we left the coffeeshop, Bob stopped our young, Hispanic waitress to say goodbye. When we’d first sat down, he’d asked her to pronounce her name, declaring it “really pretty.” She blushed and thanked him, and throughout the meal, he continued to engage her, gently teasing her whenever she stopped by to fill up our coffee cups. He did more of the same as we continued toward the exit, stopping to joke with the chef and his sous chef, both young and both Black. Bob wasn’t “working” them to close some business deal or score points. Instead, he seemed sincerely kind and authentically interested in them. Another surprise for me.

We live, not isolated on some island, but in community. And politics, whether we like it or not, impacts our lives in profound ways. I believe that if we can’t find a way to express our differences in order to better understand each other, then we’ll never reach consensus as a community. And when that happens, we will be leaving our lives open for politicians to decide who we are and what kind of country we’ll become. In our anger and frustration with each other, we will allow others to employ the divide-and-conquer strategy that has been used to take down adversaries, communities, countries and entire empires since the dawn of time. As Americans, we are participants in the greatest experiment called democracy that has ever been attempted. Do we really want to abdicate our role in this effort as the rest of the world watches to see whether or not we’ll fail at our own hand? And all because we can’t figure out a way to talk to one another about more than the weather or who will win the next sports championship? That, to me, would be the real and avoidable tragedy.

As Bob and I said goodbye, he seemed startled when I asked him to keep in touch. Perhaps he had some of the same apprehensions and misunderstandings about me that I’d had about him. I can’t be sure. But what I do know for certain is that I need to listen and learn more. To search for common ground before I search for facts to win an argument. To remember that when unaddressed pain and fear don’t go away, they too often turn outward as anger and mistrust. And I hope I can get better about offering others the same grace I wish for them to offer me.

Photo by Anastasiya Badun on Unsplash.com.