Meeting People Where They Are

Lessons learned at the High School Reunion

Last week, I wrote about humanity. When I was younger, I would have contended that it was the Universe showing me something important: a lesson to learn. As an aside, to all who commented on the post, sent texts and emails, and called about it, THANK YOU for your thoughtful remarks.

I spent this past weekend with my high school graduating class, some of their spouses, and a few marvelous dogs. The Universe provided me with a bunch of lessons, the most important being about meeting people where they are.

Since we’re 6 weeks from the election, and voting has already started in several states, all of us on the side of truth and light have accelerated work to do, and thus this lesson is tantamount.

Several of my classmates asked me about voters to whom they’ve reached out regarding for whom they’d vote. Some people were buoyed by success and wanted more information on how to reach out to voters in swing states, or how to get connected in their areas. Some people had faced challenging situations.

Two thoughts on meeting voters where they are. First, sometimes it’s a waste of time and energy. For example, I have a neighbor. She’s been my neighbor for about 30 years. She has walked my dogs, I have cared for her cats. We have keys to each other’s houses in case we need to check on something when one of us is out of town. We have spent many hours gardening nearby, chatting all about plants. In 2008, she told me that she was terrified that if Obama won, he’d kill all the white people. Thus, we don’t normally talk politics, we each know where the other stands. She had been out of town for a lot of the summer, and when she returned, I asked if there was any chance she would consider NOT voting for the Convicted Felon. Her response, and this is a direct quote, “No ever loving, mother fu**ing way, don’t bring it up again.” Anything further would be a waste of my breath.

But often, there is someone who will give you a reason that they WON’T vote for the side of truth and light, OR there is a specific reason they WILL vote for the Convicted Felon. Before you answer, you need to consider where YOU are coming from compared to where THEY are coming from. We ALL color our answers with OUR perspectives.

A non sequitur story from the weekend. I wear an Apple watch. A classmate doesn’t wear a watch: he doesn’t have to since he’s retired. He didn’t understand why I needed such a fancy timepiece. I explained that I started wearing it on the advice of one of my doctors. When I first got sick, I had very low blood pressure, and I fell a lot. If my husband was at work, and I fell and hit my head on the way down, it could be very bad. The watch has a feature that provides a loud alarm when I fall, and if I don’t push the button, Apple watch calls 911 and sends an ambulance to where I am. Since my classmate is healthy and doesn’t fall, it would never have crossed his mind that this could be life saving for me. Once I explained my situation, he was able to meet me where I was.

When someone says that they are voting a certain way, we need to put ourselves in their shoes and understand what they are really saying. Sometimes it’s an educational issue. Sometimes there is a critical piece of information they have either learned incorrectly, or just don’t know. This is especially important when talking about economics and taxes. Before I left for the reunion, I had started writing a post all about taxes, which I had planned for today, but well, here we are. Tomorrow, TAXES!

Often, people hold certain political opinions because they don’t remember. Most people have very short memories, and remember the good and forget the bad. This is pretty standard. So, for example, people remember how life was BEFORE the pandemic. They block out DURING the pandemic, and cannot resolve “today” vs. “then”.

Therefore, when they hear “Were you better off 4 years ago than you are now?” they forget. They forget 6’ distancing, “pods” of people, the inability to find toilet paper, the fact that unemployment peaked at 15%, that so many places were closed, all the kids trying to be educated over Zoom, even all the people we lost to the ineptitude and callousness of that administration. They have forgotten.

Because it didn’t impact them directly, they have forgotten the Muslim ban, the forced separation of families at the border, that their taxes did not change appreciably under the tax “cuts”. Not to mention the hijacking of the Department of Justice and the military. The dozens of attempts at repealing the ACA. And perhaps most importantly, the SCOTUS appointments that caused the end of Roe, and the ever increasing number of deaths, from a lack of medical care, for pregnant people.

People forget all sorts of things. I saw this in action at the high school reunion. People would say… “do you remember when we…” and were met with blank stares. On our tour of the high school, we were taken to the library. None of the people in my group could remember ever having been in the library. As an aside, a number of us gathered outside of the Principal’s Office, where all of us had spent substantial time for various infractions. We all knew those seats outside his inner office where we sat, heads down, waiting to be called in for yet another talking to. (Yes, I have stories.)

Sorry, I digress.

Point is, when you are talking to voters, think about where they might be coming from that is different from your frame of reference. Take the price of tomatoes. The chart shows that they go up and down, a lot of which is seasonal. There is also fluctuation in a lot of other prices. If you click the link, you can check out other changes over time.

 It IS true that prices are higher now than they used to be. BUT if we expanded the price chart from above going back 10, 20, 50, 100 years, you’d see that prices ALMOST ALWAYS go up. When prices OVERALL go DOWN – it’s a very bad thing. (Think The Great Depression of the 1930’s.) Some prices of SOME things go down over time. For example, technology products tend to start out higher and go lower over time. But most things increase in price because, amoung other things, employers pay higher wages, which means they charge higher prices.

The chart below shows the rate of wage increases over time, compared to inflation.

When wage increases outstrip inflation people have more money to spend. In talking to voters, it’s important to help them realize that if a tomato costs a dollar and they make $15/hour, it’s more expensive than if a tomato costs $1.25 and they earn $22/hour. It’s a perceptual difference that often eludes your average voter.

BUT

While I can talk numbers, numbers, math all day long, they may not accurately match an individual’s situation.

If you are out talking to voters and you are a professional whose job went remote at the beginning of the pandemic, who received good raises, watched your 401(k) grow a lot since the 2020 crash, and own a home that has increased in value, your perspective is very different from:

• Someone who lost their job in 2020 due to Convicted Felon Trump’s mismanagement of the Covid pandemic, and was never able to get a new job that paid as much.

• Someone who lost their job in 2020 due to Convicted Felon Trump’s mismanagement of the Covid pandemic and had to take money from retirement accounts to survive.

• Someone who got long Covid due to Convicted Felon Trump’s mismanagement of the Covid pandemic, and is now living on disability because they cannot work.

• A family who went from two breadwinners to one because Convicted Felon Trump’s mismanagement of the Covid pandemic caused the death of a partner.

Your job in these instances is to look forward not back, and talk about what the next years would bring given the proposals of the two candidates.

There is one thing I’d like to say about forgetfulness and memory. There are some memories that are inculcated so deeply, that they cannot be erased. I share this, with no political reason, because I’m allowed to write whatever I want (so long as I get my facts right) and this was a seminal event to me. Years ago, in high school, I had a friend. We were inseparable. Due to circumstances beyond our control, we were unable to see one another, and we lost touch. She came to the reunion. We hugged on seeing one another, and it was as if all those decades had not passed. While we had all sorts of information to share, what mattered above everything else was that the bond of love and trust was still there. Unaffected by time and space. I had missed her all these years, I didn’t even know where she was, and couldn’t find her because I didn’t know her married name. Joyous to see her again.

So I leave you with this: love the people you love. Tell them often. Hug them more. Keep in touch. The world can be a cold, cruel place, but loving those you love is sustaining.

Tomorrow, TAXES!!! I get to eviscerate the Rethuglicans, so it will be a fun romp.