Figuring Out Why We Are Who We Are

By LONNIE KING

I write about politics sometimes. I write about religion sometimes. I write about media, culture, fear, hypocrisy, tribalism, and the strange ways human beings convince ourselves that our version of reality is the only acceptable one.

And if I’m being honest, part of why I write at all is because somewhere deep down, I hope people like me might reconsider some things they’ve held onto for a long time.

Not necessarily abandon every belief they’ve ever held. Not become ideological clones of me. Not suddenly vote the way I vote or think exactly the way I think. But maybe soften a little—maybe question something.

Maybe hold a little more space for people they’ve been taught to fear, dismiss, or reduce into categories.

The older I get, though, the more I realize changing someone’s deeply held worldview is a little like trying to untangle a thousand knots from an old shoelace. You tug on one knot and five others tighten.

The Knots We Carry

People are not shaped by one thing.

They are shaped by parents who never said “I love you.” By churches that taught certainty before empathy. By wars they survived before they were emotionally old enough to process them. By neighborhoods where everybody looked alike and thought alike.

By political movements. By cable news. By heartbreak. By economic fear. By patriotism. By shame. By the desperate human need to belong somewhere.

And after enough years, all those knots become intertwined with identity itself.

That’s part of what makes this moment in America so difficult. We keep arguing as though people arrived at their beliefs through calm, rational, evidence-based analysis alone.

Most of us didn’t. Most of us inherited pieces of ourselves long before we ever examined them.

Looking at People Differently

I have people I love deeply who sit on very different ends of the political, cultural, and religious spectrum. Some of them see the world in ways I struggle to understand. Some of them hold views that frustrate me. Some of them carry fears I don’t share.

But the older I get, the more I find myself asking a different question. Not, “How can someone believe that?” But instead, “What happened in their life that made that belief feel necessary, comforting, or safe?”

That doesn’t excuse harmful ideas. It doesn’t mean prejudice suddenly becomes harmless. It doesn’t mean every belief deserves equal moral weight.

But understanding how people become who they become feels more useful to me now than simply labeling them and walking away. Because once you love people deeply, everything becomes more complicated.

The “media” has a face. The “agenda” has a face. The “those people” have faces.

And sometimes the people we love most are carrying knots they never even realized were tied into them.

Noticing My Own Knots

It took me a long time to come to the understanding that I carry a lot of those knots with me too.

Some were tied there by religion. Some by culture. Some by fear.

Some by the deep human need to feel safe, accepted, and certain.

The difference is not that I somehow escaped those knots. It’s that life eventually forced me to begin noticing how tightly they had been tied into me.

Maybe that’s part of growing older.

Not becoming smarter than everyone else. Not winning every argument. But slowly developing enough humility to realize that all of us are carrying things we didn’t fully choose and didn’t fully understand.

Loosening the Knots

Truthfully, I don’t know how many minds are ever changed by blog posts, political arguments, sermons, podcasts, or social media debates. Sometimes it feels like all we really do is pull harder on each other’s knots.

But I still write.

Because I still believe people can soften. I still believe empathy matters. I still believe fear and certainty don’t have to have the final word in our relationships. And maybe the goal isn’t winning every argument.

Maybe the goal is learning how to loosen a few knots–in ourselves and each other–without losing our humanity in the process.

Grace and grit to you! —LK