“To be one, to be united is a great thing.
But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.”
People often feel strongly about beliefs. Sometimes people feel so strongly that they believe their mission is to convince everyone else to believe what they do. Although this may seem like an honorable undertaking, it is not always well received. Especially is the other person already has strongly held beliefs that have been thoroughly considered.
Have you ever been in a situation where you observed one person trying to lobby, manipulate or pressure another another person into changing what they believed? Was it painful to watch?
When talking about beliefs, there is an important distinction between respecting someone’s beliefs and agreeing with someone’s beliefs.
For those who have reached Milestone 3, Self-Authorship, this distinction is often easier to see than when one is in the Vessel milestone or the Crossroads milestone. Why is it easier? Because you are secure in your belief. You do not have to convince someone else to believe what you do in order to be secure in your belief.
Those in the Vessel milestone may have enough insecurity about the belief that if others don’t believe as they do, it can create discomfort. What’s an easy way to remove that discomfort? Convince the other person their belief is wrong. This reduces the insecurity and discomfort.
Someone who has attained the third milestone of self-authorship, secure in their beliefs, can easily say:
‘I recognize that we differ in our beliefs. I can respect your belief, but I do not agree with your belief.’
‘Please don’t keep pressuring me to try to make me agree with your beliefs. I have considered this carefully and can respect your belief, but disagree. Can we agree to disagree?’
It goes without saying to beware of someone who agrees to disagree regarding beliefs, but conducts sneak attacks to continue their campaign to convert you to their way of thinking.
It might be worth remembering that sometimes people will argue vehemently against changing their belief about a particular, relatively insignificant item. As mentioned previously, this may be due to the discomfort they are experiencing if they begin to question even one belief of the external belief system, then that brings all the beliefs of the external belief system into question. If one belief turns out to be false, then all the beliefs could be false.
Sometimes it is amazing how passionately people will argue for a long-held belief because to let it go, means letting go of all the other beliefs from the exteneral belief system and this is too ungrounding. What in the world would they believe?
There may be occasion when we think the easy way out is to let someone else tell us what to believe. Then we don’t have to do the hard work of deciding what to believe about the world. But if we have journeyed through the Crossroads, we know the price we paid for the journey was worth reaching the third milestone. Where we can author what we want to believe about the world while still respecting what others have authored for their beliefs about the world.
REFLECTION
Reflect upon an instance when you were able to respect another individual's beliefs even though you did not agree with their belief.
Reflect upon an instance when your belief was respected by another person, but that person did not agree with you. How did that feel? Did it affect how strongly you. held your belief?
Imagine that you are called in to mediate between two countries who have been feuding for decades. What would you share with representatives of these two countries to assist them in working toward a resolution of their different beliefs? How would you facilitate the representatives respecting each countries’ beliefs?