In his 2005 hit song Bon Jovi asked, “who says you can’t go home?” My emphatic answer, I do!
Even so I traveled with my sister and fiancé to my home town of Ringling, Oklahoma for Labor Day weekend. Ringling may be my hometown, but I did not feel like I was home.
Perhaps it was because my parents moved from Ringling and sold our house two years ago. Or it was because I didn’t recognize the new faces in town or the faces of those who have grown up since I left. Or maybe it was because I was treated like a visitor in the church I grew up in.
But the biggest reason Ringling did not feel like home is because my world view is now much different than when I left Ringling.
I cringed at the Confederate flags flying in some of the yards. I winced at the negative comments made about Islam and “the liberals” during Sunday school. I pitied those for whom the peak of their existence was playing high school football. It was all too much. I wanted to shut down and return to the OCU bubble that I have grown accustom to.
But then my fiancé did something that surprised me.
Instead of shutting down she opened up. When the “evils of Planned Parenthood” was brought up she didn’t roll her eyes and move on. She gave her opinion. When concerns about Islam were raised she did not boil up inside. She shared her experience with Muslims.
To my surprise she was not yelled at or flat out rejected. She was well received. She didn’t change anyone’s mind, but she made people think.
Isn’t that what happened to me when I came to OCU?
I came to school well traveled and well rounded, but my ideas had never been challenged.
My freshman year for the first time in my life I wasn’t asked “what do you believe,” but “why do you believe what you do?” This is not to say that I transitioned from a bible-thumping conservative to a long haired hippy liberal. The change was more subtle that that. I still hold many of the same beliefs I came to OCU with, but now I am more open and aware of the opinions of others.
Last weekend my fiancé succeeded where I had failed. I was ready to shut out the opinions I disagreed with.
That is exactly what I would expect conservative, small town people to do to me. But she did something amazing. She started a dialogue. She was willing to listen to the other side while still expressing her beliefs.
She brought a little bit of the open mindedness I experienced at OCU home.
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