I got into a huge conversation with my friend's cleaning-man today: Turns out he is from Cleveland, is a dead-head, ran his own non-profit at one point, was involved in Israel advocacy youth programming, and was part of a Jewish vigilante group that went after anti-Semites in Cleveland*. I'm not saying I condone his actions, but I do enjoy hearing people's crazy life stories.
Behold, the power of words - how different the world would be if we all just took more time to speak to each other, both to produce words and to listen to those produced by others, once in a while.
* They vandalized property and got into bar fights. If he would have spoken about serious violence, I probably would have walked out of the room or started yelling. As it is, the stuff he mentioned was mild enough to be on the "wild youth" side - it didn't sound like he seriously hurt people. So I was able to listen, knowing that I condemn his actions, but that he is going through a tough time and needed to talk, and it was not the moment to verbalize that condemnation.
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