“Relationships are easy,” said no one ever.

I grew up watching the nightly news. Every night after dinner, or before dinner, but never during dinner my family would watch the nightly news. Peter Jennings was my favorite anchor, I believed he was the most stand-up man a man could be after my own dad.

Now I listen to podcasts.

I love to watch TV but find myself more distracted by it if I’m moving around. I can work on projects while I’m sitting down, like all my cross-stitching, crocheting, and knitting. But I can’t move from room to room like I can with a phone in my pocket.

Today on a podcast I heard some advice I’ll carry with me forever:

WE DON’T HAVE TO TAKE OTHER PEOPLE’S PASSIONS PERSONALLY.

Tomorrow is election day. All year we’ve heard a roar from our politicians, on top of the roar from the CDC and WHO. All year long we’ve heard politicians debate over our health, and what we should do, and who is in charge of what we should do. For those of us that voted for smaller government, you had your wish and here we are. For those of us who voted against “socialized medicine,” you had your wish and here we are.

I am a registered Democrat. I am liberal in my political views. My father-in-law is a registered Republican and pretty conservative in his political views. But the things we have in common connect us in ways the political “spectrum” can’t take away. We both love our families. We both loved his son. He is my father-in-law and I’m his daughter-in-law.

All relationships take work, we don’t all get along all the time. We all have our passions. My father-in-law and I like rock music, but we like different kinds. We both love the country but I have no desire to be a farmer and he loves farming when he isn’t at his full time job.

If you want to go full sphere with this, what would happen if your best friend did something devastating? Hurt someone? Hurt multiple people? You would be devastated, but would you cut ties with them completely? Or would you try to support them through the aftermath? Neither answer is the correct one. You can decide something is unforgivable and never speak to the person again. I get it, I’ve done it. You can also decide that everyone needs a friend and try to just be there for the person, even while recognizing what they did is wrong and you don’t agree with it.

Sometimes our differences are easy to see, like the way we dress. Sometimes they are below the surface, like our feelings towards other cultures or religions. Sometimes they are on our front lawns in the way of political signs or decorations. Sometimes they are in the things we write and put online for the world to see.

My point is this- we are all people. We all live on Earth. We all need to work together to protect this Earth. We all need to work together to make sure everyone can vote as easily as we can, because not everyone can vote as easily. We all need to let everyone vote for their own person, even when we don’t like it. We need to work to make our relationship great, to make our relationship sustainable. If we all act like teenagers, no one wins. Teenagers will tell you they never win.

We all need to realize our passions are not another person’s passion, and that’s okay. It’s the power of dialogue without everything being a fight. The power to walk away when you need to and come back when you’re ready. My husband and I never fought before we were married, and didn’t until we were seriously sleep deprived with our second child. And even then we didn’t “fight” like yell at each other. We were not the same. We had strong differences. But we loved each other. And that love gave strength to our best qualities and we barely noticed our differences. Our differences didn’t matter because they did not affect the love we had for each other.

**Thanks to “The Lazy Genius” for her podcast episode “Loving People You Disagree With” that inspired this article. Keep up the great work, I’m all about making my life easier without worrying more.