In any situation, there’s our side, there’s their side, and then standing off somewhere to the side, waiving, is the truth. Most of us never really get past our side. We tell our side, we defend our side, we embellish our side, and we stand on our side because in our minds, it is the only side that really matters. We say that the truth is what matters, but in our hearts and minds, honestly, we are only interested in our side. If we can just get someone, or lots of someones, to support us on our side then we feel validated. We can stand taller, with our supporters cheering us on. The supporters who only heard our side.

• 

I’m no lawyer, but I watch a lot of lawyer shows on television. I have never once seen a trial on television that, in its desire for truth, limited the evidence to only one side of the story. But we, in our zeal to join bandwagons, jump on them after reading or hearing just the one side of someone’s story. We cheer, we defend, but we never ask… so what about the other person? How did they feel about what happened? What was their perspective?

Unfortunately, in our world today, most of us just want supporters. We need those social media likes from people we barely know to encourage us to keep up the good fight. To help validate our position. We aren’t really interested in resolving anything. We need validation for what we are doing so much that we just seek out those who will give it to us without seeking out the truth of the matter.

We never tell the story or conflict we are sharing from the other person’s side. If I were to tell the story of the last fight I had with my husband from his perspective, it would go something like this.

He asked me to consider an option that I had not considered, and I immediately got on the defensive. I didn’t care to consider his point of view because I had already made up my mind on the subject. I held my defensive position and would not admit to my unwillingness to consider other options.

I’m not looking too good right now, am I? But if I had told that story from my perspective, he would have been the one who looked bad. I mean, really, arguments rarely ever make anyone involved look very good. But it takes at least two sides of a story to get anywhere near understanding the truth of the matter.

In our world today, we get offended and we defend. We draw lines in the sand and force others to choose an ill-informed side. We take stories we read at face value and make pronouncements about situations that we cannot possibly understand. But what if we told our stories from the other person’s point of view? What if the story we posted about the rude grocery store cashier on Facebook was told from the perspective of the cashier? It might go something like this:

I was really in a hurry when I stopped at the grocery store. Usually, I am pretty nice to the cashiers, but today I was distracted with all I had to do and I just needed her to hurry it up. I didn’t bother to ask how her day was going, like I said I was in a hurry. I huffed several times and looked at my watch when she messed up and had to go back and delete a wrong charge. Can you believe she told me I just needed to be patient when I told her I was really in a rush?

Like I said, there’s our side, their side, and the truth is standing somewhere to the side. Getting to the truth in our stories means we have to be willing to consider the other person’s story, too. We can’t stop at gathering our supporters to make us feel better about ourselves. The truth transcends all of that plotting and scheming. To get to it, so must we.