Getting outside our comfort zones
I appreciated Leonard Pitts’ column on reading women authors. I can quickly name my three favorite women authors (Lois McMaster Bujold, Anne McCaffery, and Mercedes Lacky) even though I am an acknowledged expert on Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Times series.
It is this willingness to move outside of our comfort zones that I would like to address. When we lock ourselves in a box that allows only our own viewpoint, we don’t learn and grow. It is usually painful to examine our viewpoints, especially viewpoints deeply held, which are the ones we least examine.
Watching Sean Hannity or Rachel Maddow with an open mind is bound to be very hard for some, much as is considering the needs of business interests or the needs of welfare families. Trying to accept people alien to ourselves is a challenge. But if we do not try, we are dooming ourselves to narrower and more circumscribed lives than this century’s problems require. We are left with the tired solutions that have so polarized us. It is said that trying the same thing and hoping for a different outcome is a sign of insanity.
So, this New Year, let us hope for sanity.
Bonnie Oppenheimer
Columbus
The Dispatch Editorial Board is made up of publisher Peter Imes, columnist Slim Smith, managing editor Zack Plair and senior newsroom staff.
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