Catch and Release

I just finished teaching my “writing op-eds that create change” class full of such wise people who care so much about issues facing society today. It was an honor to be among them. During our final live call, we were talking about using our opening paragraph to “hook” people who think differently about social issues in order to help them see another perspective. To “hook” is to get them interested enough to keep reading.

One class member admitted that he was raised to debate, not dialogue and realized his hooks are almost all negative. Debate tries to negate the perspective of the other, and antagonize them, while dialogue allows us to be curious about the other person’s point of view and how they came to think the particular way they think about an issue. Debate is a finite game—we play to win. And that means there is a loser. And dialogue is an infinite game—we play to learn. Debate is reductive and dialogue is generative.

A woman named Mary Ellen spoke up, and I felt the rightness of her metaphor in my bones. “Yesterday, I saw a photo of a beautiful large rainbow trout someone caught while fishing—and then released. So, yes, we have to ‘hook’ people in order for them to listen, but we need to operate under that same humane approach and not only catch, but also release.”

A lot of light bulbs went off in my head. Catch and release. Hook and unhook. Finite game and infinite game. Debate and dialogue. Arrogance and cultural humility.

Our job is to “hook” people – and to release them back into the wild with exposure to a different way of being in the world. It is not to hook, kill, cook, and eat them, but to let them continue to grow—and to continue to grow ourselves. That’s what dialogue is about. That’s what life itself is about. Catch and release. Both actions are necessary.

This is not yet a complete thought on my part. But it felt right deep in my bones.