No matter what happens in November, like millions of people with different ideas, we’ll still be friends. Our friendship is based upon real interactions, not listening to the latest tweet outrage or whatever the new political offense of the day is. We put our humanity first, and most importantly, we know that we are each doing our best to live within the values we each hold dear.

The fact is that humanity, free speech, and elections are messy. But they don’t have to be a mess. Being part of the world means getting comfortable with being uncomfortable — breaking down silos so that our common humanity comes to the fore. By avoiding the mess, by creating caricatures instead of detailed pictures of real people, we deny others the opportunity to learn from our gifts and ourselves the opportunity to learn from the gifts of others.