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In a desperate attempt to escape what seems to be our pretty dark shared reality, I went to see “Gladiator II.” The escape worked for a couple of hours. Then, just as the final credits were rolling, I snapped back to real life and had an insight that may help shed some light on the completely uncharted path we seem to be on.
Minor spoiler alert: Right before those final credits, the movie ends on the outskirts of ancient Rome with a fierce battle between warring sides. One side wins, but no one escapes massive carnage.
As the lights in the theater came up, I wondered: “What happens now?” How do the survivors step over the carnage, go back into Rome and somehow work together to fix a city left in disarray?
The parts about “two sides” and “massive carnage” sounded, at least metaphorically, eerily like the divisive battles we have lived through this year, in this country and so much of the rest of the world.
A few days later I was talking to a wise person who made a disarmingly simple and completely relevant point: “If you can’t find common ground, start with shared ground.” The warring armies outside Rome may not find the same purpose just yet, but they can start by trying to coexist.
Maybe that says in post-election America we should just suck it up and try to get along. That made some sense, at least for a few minutes, until I remembered that the issues dividing us are so deep, and now so cultural, it’s almost impossible to see where we would compromise.