Mayfield: Get out of your bubble; You might be surprised at who you meet

We had just pulled away from our house headed to the airport. As we inched closer down our Seattle neighborhood street she stood astride her bike right in the way not moving. There was plenty of room on the street for her to ride and for us to drive. But as we neared her she began to scream at us. I rolled down my window to tell her we lived here and we were glad to share the street, but could she please share as well. To which she responded with a string of some of the worst swear words I have heard in a long while. She didn’t care our small kids were in the car listening. She didn’t care this was the street where we lived. She didn’t care that we were otherwise glad to share. She just wanted to scream and then ride away still screaming.

I tell you this, because in recent years we’ve seen a lot of evidence of like-minded people sharing more and more spaces. We’ve seen tribalism politically, socially and now even geographically. We increasingly live in bubbles of our own making. And in the creation of those bubbles we believe we are surrounding ourselves with other good people and those elsewhere are bad people.

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This screaming, swearing, fury happened in our city, in our neighborhood, on our very street almost directly in front of our own home.

And then, we went on vacation. We traveled to Wyoming and Montana for 10 days. While in Yellowstone a man wearing a bright red Make-American-Great-Again hat came right up to us and offered to take our family picture. He joyfully told us about his travels, asked us about our own and walked away calling back to tell our kids to mind their dads.

We attended the rodeo where every other person was wearing red white and blue and evangelical symbology in some kind of mix. Those folks scooched over to make room for us in a crowded grandstand. They smiled at our kids and raised their hats in respect to my in-laws.

We visited a mountain top where our son struck up an instant friendship with a family from Pennsylvania. A family with very different life experiences from a very different part of the country. Yet when we saw them again randomly in another place days later they gleefully called our son’s name and came over and we all compared notes about what we had seen and done so far.

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I tell you all this because this happened outside our bubble. These interactions came between people who met at random in new places where the prevailing political and social norms are supposedly very different.

These are anecdotes. Points in time. Plots on a grid. They are random. Yet, I cannot stop thinking about what they actually could mean. They could mean that when we other other people or other groups…we lose something. When we cling to our tribe we aren’t always clinging to just good people. There are bad people here too and there are good people there.

Maybe instead of sheltering ourselves and othering people, we should be actively looking for new ways to connect with more people from more places and looking for the common good we all share.

On the flight home I heard a familiar voice and then from one row back I heard someone say my name.  I turned and there – at random and by coincidence was my friend Molly, a genuinely good human.

It turns out, no matter where you go, there are friends, new and old good people  just waiting to find you.

Travis Mayfield is a local media personality and fills-in as a host on KIRO Newsradio.