01/26/2026
Paying Attention Is Not the Same as Taking Sides
I am heartbroken for our country.
I’ve never been deeply active in politics. I consider myself an independent. I’ve voted for both parties at different times. For most of my life, that felt sufficient. It felt like proof that I was looking at both sides with reason.
But what I’m witnessing in the United States right now doesn’t feel like a normal political disagreement. It feels heavier than that. Older. Like one of those moments history quietly circles back to and asks us a more personal question… not what do you believe? but are you paying attention to the patterns?
Before you decide what box to put me in, know this: I’m not a decorated academic from a liberal arts college. I have an Associate of Arts degree from a local community college, but I do read - constantly.
I read for pleasure, escape, information, inspiration, and understanding. I read headlines and decide when to dig deeper. I read and subscribe to magazines and blogs and read novels alongside books on leadership and self-discovery. Reading has always been how I orient myself in the world.
Reading doesn’t tell us what to think.
It teaches us how to notice.
And lately, what I’ve noticed is a growing pressure to be certain. Pressure to pick a side quickly, defend it loudly, and stop asking questions once you’ve chosen where you belong.
But certainty can be comforting in moments that actually require curiosity.
In ‘The Fourth Turning,’ historians William Strauss and Neil Howe describe history as moving in generational cycles. Roughly every eighty to one hundred years, societies enter a crisis period. This is a turning point when institutions strain, narratives fracture, and people are asked to decide what kind of country they want to be on the other side.
These periods are unsettling by nature. They don’t announce themselves with clarity or consensus. They are confusing, emotional, and deeply human. And they demand something more difficult than loyalty: discernment.
This is where defensiveness becomes tempting. When the world feels unstable, we instinctively protect what feels familiar. Often our identity, our group, our sense of being “right.” Curiosity, by contrast, asks us to pause. To stay present. To ask, What am I being invited to see that I might otherwise miss?
Curiosity is not weakness.
It is a form of courage.
Political theorist Hannah Arendt once observed that the greatest danger in times of upheaval is not fanaticism, but confusion… the loss of a shared reality:
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced believer, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists.”
That line stops me every time, not because it accuses, but because it warns.
Paying attention doesn’t require you to abandon your values. It asks you to examine them. To notice when language hardens, when questioning is discouraged, when loyalty is valued more than truth.
This isn’t about choosing a party.
It’s about choosing a posture.
Defensiveness closes a door.
Curiosity opens a window.
I’m not writing this to persuade you of anything. I’m writing because I’m trying to keep my conscience engaged in a moment when it would be easier to look away or dig our heels in on repeated rhetoric.
If this moment in history is asking anything of us, perhaps it’s this:
not to be louder, but to be more attentive.
not to be certain, but to be curious.
That’s where thinking begins.
What might we notice about ourselves, about others, about this moment if we stayed present a little longer, curious instead of defensive, open to empathy and conversation instead of certainty?
