I just finished interviewing ten extraordinary people for the upcoming season of my podcast Becoming Who You Truly Are. The theme of the season is Forgiveness and Reconciliation.

We talked about things that matter, like forgiveness and reconciliation in the face of racism, rape, war and family estrangement, among other traumas. Our conversations brought me to tears. They made me laugh. I feel like I’m a better person for having spoken with my guests. And I feel a deep connection with each of these ten people.

One of my guests is Arno Michaelis, a founding member of what became the largest racist skinhead organization in the world. He says, “When you don’t have a healthy way of processing trauma it can very easily get transferred to other people. And I will say that I was offered every single healthy way of processing trauma on a silver platter throughout my childhood. And I just didn’t engage with any of them, and that’s what led me to start lashing out and hating people and hurting people.” If you listen to the interview, you’ll learn about Arno’s mind-bending life change.

There’s Dr. Joshua Coleman, a leading expert on family estrangement. He spoke about how radically family life has changed since just a few decades ago. “It used to be the child’s job to earn the parents’ love and respect. And increasingly, these days, it’s the parents’ job to earn the child’s love and respect.”

Sobering?

Listen to this:
Thordis Elva, who co-authored a book on forgiveness with her rapist, says to me, “It’s incredibly empowering to visit your most wounded places and really take your fear by the horns.”

And then there’s Phil Cousineau, whom I knew best as the author of The Art of Pilgrimage (but it turns out that he’s the author of more titles than would fit on this page). He talks about the importance of presence to the process of forgiveness: “Sometimes it’s enough to simply sit with someone and absorb maybe what they can’t say.”

The superficial and tribal nature of our social and political debates this year are a reminder that, as a society, we seem to have forgotten how to have authentic real conversations about things that deeply matter to us all.

Will the coronavirus change this? Will the stress of our current global crisis further splinter our fragile connections with one another, or will it bring us together around things that truly matter in our lives?

The classic answer to these questions has long been that, under stress, people will respond with either “fight or flight,” becoming aggressive or leaving the scene. A 2012 study, published in the journal Psychological Science, however, suggests that acute stress may actually lead to greater cooperative, social and friendly behavior, providing a third alternative to the fight or flight options. In the study, subjects who were under stress showed significantly more positive social behavior than control subjects who were not in a stressful situation.

This gives me hope.

I believe we have an unprecedented opportunity to initiate real conversations about things that matter, even — and maybe especially — with people who disagree with our point of view. I did not always agree with the perspectives of my podcast guests. But listening and engaging in real conversation is not the same as endorsing a particular perspective. Although I listened carefully to what they said, this doesn’t mean I support all of their views. It just means that I opened myself up to hearing and considering the possibilities present in someone else’s experiences and perspectives.

And that opening has led to a deep sense of connection with all ten of the people I interviewed, whether or not I agreed with all of their views. It’s the kind of real human connection I believe we desperately seek during this time of collective uncertainty and divisiveness. We long to laugh and to cry together about our shared imperfect humanity.

Our current crisis has the ability to tear us apart or pull us into greater oneness. Which of these outcomes occurs will be determined, in part, by the nature of our conversations.

It matters more than ever that we talk with and listen to each other about things that really matter.