By Xavier Graves, Restorative Justice Institute of Oklahoma Executive Director
Every time I open my feed, I end up reading a post I know will frustrate me, sometimes before I even finish the first sentence. And yet, I keep reading. My timeline is full of collisions: thoughts, opinions, and critiques crashing into each other from people with seemingly polarized identities and ideologies.
These conversations matter. But many of us are struggling to have them with people who think differently, without leaving wreckage behind.
I believe polarizing views can co-exist in the same space because I’ve seen it happen in circle after circle. People arrive defensive or hurt and leave with more hope, appreciation, and healing.
Circles work because they help us avoid, what I believe is, the most harmful collisions that I experience online. The polarity that’s often hardest to hold isn’t left versus right. It’s the collision between someone’s sense of logic and someone else’s experience of fear.
I Won’t Urge You to Connect Before Correcting
In a workplace or community training, RJIOK may offer tools to help people connect before they correct. But in this instance, I’m not sure that’s the best starting point.
Bringing logic into an emotional conversation can be a trauma response. We are talking about issues layered with history, identity, and trauma – such as war, violence, genocide, liberty, and rights. These conversations are emotionally charged, and it’s hard not to feel urgency about the direction our society is heading.
For many of us, the views we hear aren’t just ideas. They are echoes of harm. They feel like the reckless driver on the road who, if not stopped, will cause a serious wreck. We correct to prevent more harm. And when we stay silent, we fear being complicit.
I see that. I feel it, too.
Complicity and Correction are not our only two options.
Staying silent or reflexively correcting someone can both be trauma responses. Silence often stems from a flight or freeze response, while correction can come from a fight response.
When I choose to engage with someone I disagree with, I try to offer a compassionate challenge. That means using my story, my vulnerability, and my humanity to show how their words, actions, or behaviors are impacting me or the people I care about.
The compassionate part comes from challenging without trying to convince. Because if my goal is to persuade, they’ll likely sense and experience my words as manipulation.
Compassion doesn’t water down the truth. It creates the conditions for people to see their impact without shame.
Recently, I met with someone I had tension with. We exchanged messages, then we decided to meet to reset. We both admitted to walking in with fear. But we left with gratitude, because instead of blaming or correcting, we challenged each other with compassion.
Circles Are Practice Grounds
Compassionate challenge takes practice. It requires healing, reflection, and repetition. That’s why I invite you to keep coming back to RJIOK’s restorative circles.
Circles aren’t just spaces to talk. They help us slow down, listen across differences, and remember that people are more than their opinions.
Circles train us to respond instead of react and to stay grounded in our shared humanity, even when the world tells us to pick a side.
So come practice. Not because it’s easy, but because it’s necessary.
Liberation requires struggle. And how we struggle with one another matters just as much as what we struggle for.
At RJIOK, we’re not trying to win arguments.
We’re trying to curate conversations that heal.
Note: RJIOK’s Community Connection Circles are held on the first and third Tuesdays of every month. Visit restorativejusticeok.com to learn more.