Security of Sameness
Listening was not a skill I held before coming to BYU. Rather than listening, I was cooking up counterarguments. I became rather insufferable, and worse, others applauded my behavior. If I steamrolled someone in AP Government, I was articulate, and classmates flocked toward me and my dogmatism. I fled from uncomfortable conversations by burying myself in my beliefs and telling myself that this was open-mindedness. It was everyone else’s job to listen and change. I had already arrived. My inability to converse was not praiseworthy; it was fragility. I hid behind self-righteousness so I never had to confront my prejudices.
BYU holds me to a higher standard than my home city did. Class discussions are deeper—people listen to each other. Students discuss weighty sociopolitical issues without belittling one another. I used to hold my beliefs as if they were armor: rigid and uncompromising. Slowly, I have made more room for fluidity in my thinking. The best protection against ideological opposition is to embrace it. Love it.
I could have chosen to hate this place. I could still choose to define it by its shortcomings and lament that it will never amount to my big-city expectations. If I do choose this path, I will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, a victim of my own entitlement and close-mindedness. No one else’s. Some retreat from BYU out of a belief that opposition equals a diminished educational experience. I maintain it enriches our education. The frequency of truly respectful disagreement we have here makes us better students, more tolerant people who are able to see nuance where others see only black and white. This school taught me to lean into tough conversations. My classes became a training ground for me to truly become open-minded. The true uniqueness of Brigham Young University is in its intellectual diversity.
Now, in my third semester, I found I don’t need the safety net of agreement to connect. I found a new sense of security in knowing others’ convictions do not threaten me. I realized I do not have to hate this place. I am allowed to love BYU. I have found a freedom here I didn’t know I was missing back home in my comfortably liberal city. I found the freedom to sit next to someone in class that thinks differently, even in opposition to me. At first, this felt scary and wrong. Wasn’t my value tied to my convictions? I stunted my own sense of belonging by defining myself and everyone around me by whether their worldview was “right.” I thought I was feeling righteous anger, but underneath was fear.
Not everyone’s fears are unfounded. A commitment to peacemaking does not excuse BYU from rooting out institutionalized prejudices. These pitfalls keep true belonging out of reach for many. But there is an element of choice in a sense of belonging. My divergent identity and worldview does not disqualify me from inclusion. I choose to make this place a home, despite my fears that I could never be happy in an environment so unlike my city. There are more people that can feel like they belong here if only they would make that choice. If bitterness becomes a central part of our identity, we have given power to that which we resent.
Reveling in rightness is tempting. I still do it sometimes, when I crave a false sense of individuality and run to my like-minded friends for “some semblance of sanity.” But I mostly feel disgusted with myself when I need this. I couldn’t have regular conversation with a person who disagreed with me. Why did I think I was better than them? How could I be so blind to the beam in my own eye? I had convinced myself I deserved one-way empathy, that my rightness excused me from truly listening.
Unquestioning self-righteousness plagues our generation. We are blind to hypocrisy. It frightens me that I gladly contributed. It seems everyone is in a race to proclaim their correct point of view and to annihilate anyone who disagrees. Who made us the stewards of morality? Are we not all beggars? BYU is a place to appreciate the beauty of disagreement, which is an essential step to embodying unconditional love. Rather than cowering in the security of sameness, we should instead embrace opposition, for “in proving contraries, truth is made manifest.”