JAN 25, 2019 – Dear Mr. President and Madam Speaker:
Progress! (Maybe, kinda, sorta?) At least government workers may breathe a semi-sigh of relief going into the weekend. Now, you might advise me to mind my own business — literally — and use this space to maybe promote something like our Valentine’s Day cards, but I’d like to humbly suggest a good read to help you make the most of these next few critical weeks.
I first read Dr. David Keirsey’s Please Understand Me decades ago, and still pull it out every so often to reconsider its wisdom. Seeing you both dig your heels in to the backs of hard-working Americans for these past 35 days reminded me of this groundbreaking book on personality types and temperament … I believe that what the renowned psychologist wrote back in 1978 would serve you very well now. It’s great perspective for all of us, actually, as we each try to find common ground in challenging relationships of our own.
If I do not want what you want, please try not to tell me that my want is wrong. Or, if I believe other than you, at least pause before you correct my view. Or if my emotion is less than yours — or more, given the same circumstances — try not to ask me to feel more strongly or weakly.
I do not, for the moment at least, ask you to understand me. That will come only when you are willing to give up changing me into a copy of you. If you will allow me any of my own wants or emotions or beliefs or actions, then you open yourself so that, someday, these ways of mine might not seem so wrong, and might finally appear to you as right — for me.
To put up with me is the first step to understanding me. Not that you embrace my ways as right for you, but that you are no longer irritated or disappointed with me for my seeming waywardness. And, in understanding me, you might come to prize my differences from you and — far from seeking to change me — preserve and even nurture those differences.
Mr. President and Speaker Pelosi, many pray that you will be able to, at very least, respect your differences and find middle ground. To that end, you and members of Congress will begin seeing stacks and stacks of our Please Listen postcards arriving in your mail. Nearly 30,000 of them have already been sent to legislators throughout the land. Our company originally created the Please Listen cards as a way for caring Cardies to express themselves after the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting killed 17 teens … we offered the cards free to anyone who wanted to write and share their feelings on gun control with their elected officials. Here we’re again offering them free-for-the-asking to anyone who wishes to share their views with you. We the People want to be heard.We want to believe that you have the ability to better understand each other and respect the needs of the more than 326 million people you serve. Please Listen.
founder & chief creative
