For a long time I’ve been wanting to write about us. Americans and our extreme division. Because it breaks my heart. But I want to do it in a way that doesn’t create more division. And yet I might want to slip an opinion in there, or if I have particularly feisty one, it might just slip in there on its own. And it often feels to me these days as though expressing an opinion at all is to necessarily to divide yourself from others.

And so. How to express so much frustration, anger, disbelief, fear, sadness without fortifying those walls that keep us from seeing and knowing each other? And without losing sight of what’s important: the fight for a more just, equitable, loving, sustainable, healthy world? (Because I believe we all want that, even if we don’t realize it. We may disagree on how to achieve it, and some people may not appear to want it because they’ve been sad, scared, and angry for too long, but we want it nonetheless.)

Two of those words I wrote in that last sentence are key to this kind of expression, I think: fight for. A friend said a while ago that she wasn’t fighting against anyone or anything, that she was just fighting for certain things. And I loved that. Then we don’t have to name an enemy. Because let’s be honest–we’re all too busy and tired to have enemies. If we focus on what we’re for instead of what we’re against, it feels so much better. We don’t have to carry the heaviness of hostility and resentment around all the time.

That isn’t to say, of course, that we’ll never have to say something that will make another person upset. Speaking out for what we’re working toward will vex others at times. It just will. But if we’ve spoken with kindness and respect, we’ve done all we can. And our words and our tone really do make a difference. We can wound, or we can heal. We can fight against or fight for. Antagonism will inevitably find its way into our lives sometimes no matter what we do, but we don’t have to add more. And what a relief that we have that choice.