How to Reopen the Conversation
That conversation with my friend didn’t end with laughter—it ended in silence. Sometimes silence becomes its own wall, built not from hatred but from exhaustion. You tell yourself it’s better to stay quiet than to risk more pain. But silence has a cost. It eats away at the possibility of understanding.
So how do we begin again?
David Brooks, in How to Know a Person, helped me see what I was missing. Before anyone can hear what we’re saying, they need to feel seen. Not agreed with. Not validated. Just seen. When I read that, I thought of my brother. Neither of us was trying to see the other. We were defending positions, protecting wounds.
Brooks describes people he calls “illuminators”—those who help others feel seen rather than judged. As he puts it: “To see someone else you have to be willing to be changed by what you see.”
This is what makes difficult conversations so frightening. We’re not just risking being wrong—we’re risking being changed. But that’s also what makes them necessary. Without the willingness to be changed, we’re not having a conversation. We’re delivering speeches at each other.
I’m trying to learn how to do this. Here’s what I’m working toward:
Ask questions that open rather than close
Most questions in political arguments aren’t really questions. They’re accusations disguised with a question mark.
“Don’t you think that’s hypocritical?” “How can you possibly believe that?” “What about [counterexample]?”
These are traps, not inquiries. Everyone knows it. They shut conversations down faster than direct disagreement.
Instead of arguing, I’m trying to ask: What led you to see it that way? Not as a trap. As a genuine attempt to understand the story beneath the position.
Brooks calls this “loud listening”—the kind of attention that doesn’t just wait for its turn to speak. It’s harder than it sounds. My instinct when someone says something I strongly disagree with is to immediately construct my rebuttal. But I’m learning that beneath every political stance lies something personal. Loss, betrayal, hope, fear. When I can reach that layer, the conversation changes.
Try asking:
- “Can you tell me how you came to see it that way?”
- “Was there a moment that shaped that belief?”
- “What feels most important to you about this?”
These questions only work if you genuinely want to know the answer. If you’re just performing curiosity while preparing your counterargument, people can tell. The question becomes another weapon.
But when the curiosity is real—when I genuinely pause my own certainty to understand someone else’s path—something shifts. They’re no longer defending a position. They’re sharing a story. And stories, unlike positions, invite understanding instead of attack.
Represent their view at its strongest
Instead of reducing someone’s position to its worst version, try to state their concern more clearly and more fairly than they did.
When my brother and I argued about October 7, I said, “So you just hate Netanyahu and blame him for everything?” That’s attacking the weakest, most emotional version of his argument—making it easy to dismiss.
What I wish I’d said: “You believe Netanyahu’s policies are solely to blame, and you don’t think the internal divisions before October 7 contributed to Israel’s vulnerability—you’re angry that his leadership failed to protect people. Is that what you mean?” That’s representing his view at its strongest—taking it more seriously than he might have stated it himself.
And he could have done the same for me. Instead of “So you’re blaming the protesters for Hamas’s attack?” he might have said: “You’re worried that the public divisions signaled weakness that Hamas exploited, and you think internal unity matters for security—is that your concern?”
When people feel you’ve grasped their real concern—not a caricature—they stop defending and start listening. I’ve failed at this more than I’ve succeeded. But when I manage it, people soften. They become willing to hear complexity.
Speak from experience, not ideology
Facts rarely change minds. Stories sometimes do.
When I say “Israel had no choice” or “The occupation is the root cause,” I’m stating an opinion that triggers immediate defense. These are fighting words, no matter how true they feel to me.
But when I say “This is what I witnessed” or “This is what it felt like when…” I’m inviting someone into my experience rather than challenging their worldview. Personal stories are harder to dismiss and harder to argue with. They’re also harder for me to deliver with righteousness.
“I saw my friend’s neighborhood destroyed” is different from “Israel’s response was disproportionate.”
“I felt terrified when sirens went off” is different from “You don’t understand the security threat.”
“I watched my cousin flee with nothing” is different from “Palestinians are the real victims.”
Stories don’t demand agreement. They ask for witness. And that creates space for the other person to share their story too, instead of defending against my opinion.
I’m still learning this. My instinct is still to argue positions. But when I manage to speak from lived experience instead of abstract principles, something shifts. The temperature drops. We’re no longer debating—we’re trying to understand what each other has actually been through.
Admit what you don’t know
Certainty is inflammatory. When I say “The facts are clear” or “Anyone who looks at this honestly can see…” I’m not inviting dialogue—I’m daring someone to fight me.
I’m practicing saying “I could be wrong, but here’s what I’m thinking.” It feels vulnerable. Exposed. Like I’m weakening my argument before I’ve even made it. But that small admission of uncertainty does something unexpected—it creates space for the other person to admit doubt too.
When I told a friend “The sources I trust have blind spots too,” she paused. “Yeah, mine probably do as well.” That moment opened something. We moved from defending our certainty to acknowledging we’re both trying to see clearly in a fog.
Admitting what you don’t know doesn’t make you look weak. It makes you look honest. And in a world where everyone claims perfect clarity about impossibly complex situations, honesty is disarming.
I want more of those moments.
Separate facts from values
Sometimes we argue about facts when we really disagree about values—and vice versa. This confusion makes conversations impossible because we’re fighting on the wrong battlefield.
My brother and I weren’t really arguing about what happened on October 7 or before it. We were arguing about what matters most: accountability for leadership failures versus the danger of internal division. Security versus political responsibility. Those are value disagreements disguised as factual ones.
When I can name this directly, it changes everything: “It sounds like we’re seeing the same situation but weighing the harms differently. You’re prioritizing X; I’m worried about Y. Is that fair?”
This isn’t relativism—saying all views are equally valid. It’s honesty about what we’re actually disagreeing about. Sometimes the facts really are disputed. But often, we agree on what happened and disagree on what it means, what matters most, what should be done about it.
I don’t always get it right. But when I do, we stop pretending there’s one objective truth we’re both missing and start talking about the real question: given what we know, what do we value most?
That’s a conversation we can actually have.
Prioritize safety over agreement
When heat enters a conversation, the thinking brain shuts down. We move into fight-or-flight. No matter how logical my argument, no matter how clear the facts, if someone feels attacked, they can’t hear me. They’re just defending.
I’m learning to value tone over content—to pause, to acknowledge emotion before arguing facts. To make the person feel safe enough to think.
“I can see this really matters to you” or “I’m trying to understand.” These phrases feel awkward in my mouth sometimes. They sound weak, like I’m dodging the argument. But they do something crucial—they keep the door open even when we disagree. They signal: I’m not your enemy. You’re not crazy for feeling what you feel.
This doesn’t mean avoiding hard truths. It means creating the conditions where hard truths can actually be heard.
When my friend hung up the phone after I told him who I was voting for, I don’t know if it was something I said or the accumulated stress of years of division in Israel finally breaking through. Maybe both. But I’ve learned—slowly, painfully—that if someone doesn’t feel safe, nothing else matters. The stress, the trauma, the fear—it all lives just beneath the surface. One wrong word, one moment of feeling dismissed, and the conversation is over. The best argument in the world bounces off a closed heart.
Find the shared value
When we stay on the surface—arguing about policies, actions, positions—we sound like enemies. But beneath those arguments, we’re often reaching for the same things: safety, fairness, dignity, belonging. These are the deeper hungers we’re all trying to satisfy.
The problem is we forget to name them. We assume disagreement on how means disagreement on what matters. So the other person becomes not just wrong, but morally suspect. Someone who doesn’t care about justice, or security, or human life.
I’m practicing naming the shared value before I argue the difference: “We both care about justice; we just see different paths toward it.” Or “I think we both want people to be safe and free—we just disagree about what threatens those things most.”
I tried this recently with someone who supported policies I found harmful. When I said “I think we both want people to be safe and free—we just disagree about what threatens those things most,” he nodded. We still disagreed, but something shifted. He wasn’t a monster who didn’t care. I wasn’t naive or dangerous. We were two people trying to protect what we loved, seeing different dangers.
That shift—from moral enemies to people with different fears—changes what’s possible. I want to learn to create more of those shifts.
Know when to step back
Not every conversation can be healed. Sometimes the wound is too fresh, the fear too loud, the positions too hardened. Pushing forward when someone isn’t ready doesn’t create dialogue—it creates damage.
I’m learning to recognize the signs: when someone’s voice goes flat, when they stop engaging and start repeating talking points, when I feel my own chest tightening with the need to win. Those are signals that we’ve hit a wall, and continuing will only build it higher.
Stepping back doesn’t mean giving up. It means saying something like: “I care about our relationship more than winning this argument. Can we pause?” Or simply: “I hear you. Let’s talk about something else.”
I’m learning when to let silence be. But also to watch for small openings later—a shared memory, a moment of vulnerability, a text about something completely unrelated that says I still value you. Healing rarely happens through argument. It happens when one person dares to listen differently, or when enough time passes that we can try again without all the heat.
With some friends, that opening hasn’t come yet. With my brother, the conversations never stopped, but they have a long way to go—we still get heated, still fall into old patterns. But we keep trying. With others, a small gesture months later—”I’ve been thinking about what you said”—has reopened what felt permanently closed.
Sometimes, wisdom is knowing when to stop talking and trust that the relationship can survive disagreement, even if the conversation can’t continue right now.
