I have spent much of the past four years researching the qualities of a peacemaker. My job as a law professor who specializes in the First Amendment spurred that line of thinking. I often engage in discussions on the freedoms of religion, speech, the press, assembly and petition, and the divisive issues that stem off those liberties: abortion, religious freedom, racism, freedom of speech, LGBTQ+ rights, academic freedom, the news media, campus protests, regulation of social media, constitutional interpretation — to name a few.
The audiences I work with are diverse. They include diplomats, judges, academics, religious leaders, media executives, high schoolers, college students, devout churchgoers, devoted atheists and agnostics, LGBTQ+ members, those who hold traditional beliefs about sexuality, and people across the ideological spectrum. They come from all over the globe and from every race and class imaginable.
But here is what often surprises most people: Neither I nor the people with whom I talk about these potentially contentious issues have experienced a negative outcome in our conversations. We have not turned on each other in a rage. None of us has been canceled. Our conversations have not devolved into shouting or ad hominem attacks but have always been productive. That is to say, they have, without exception, led us toward better understanding each other or a common problem, or they have inched us toward a solution. In some cases, they have even helped us step toward finding agreement over disputed issues.
Those repeated experiences led me to want others to have them as well — and often. So I embarked on the journey to try to understand the habits of the peacemakers among us. I defined a peacemaker as someone who can engage in productive discourse about difficult topics; any difficult topic. That includes politics for sure, but also the many challenging conversations that can arise in family situations, the workplace, among friends, at church, or anywhere else we human beings must interact with each other.
There are those among us who know how to navigate difficult situations well. What habits do they employ? My hope was to identify them, determine why they work, and then distill those ideas down so anyone could use them.
Unsurprisingly, peacemakers employ many of their habits long before they are in actual conversations. No question, they have skills and habits they use during the middle of a difficult exchange, but some of the habits that make them effective lie in how they approach each day as much as in how they handle specific conversations. And two of those habits are especially poignant during the holidays: (1) spending time with people doing anything other than talking about hard topics; and (2) achieving some sense of inner peace.
Connecting without debating
Have you ever wondered how the Constitution of the United States was drafted? I don’t mean the ideas the founders included in it or the debates they had. I’m referring to the process. How did representatives from 13 different colonies with drastically different and competing interests come together to draft what is now the longest-standing constitution in the world? It was not easy. In an era long before air conditioning or bug spray, the delegates met in Pennsylvania in the sweltering summer heat of 1787. This was not the America we know today, where we enjoy a somewhat common culture despite our geographical differences. These men represented interests, ideologies and ways of life that made any likelihood of achieving any sort of workable agreement highly unlikely. From all objective evidence, they should not have been able to draft and agree to the Constitution.
Part of the secret sauce was that they spent time together doing all sorts of things other than debating a constitution for a new country. As legal scholar Derek Webb has discovered, the delegates spent the middle of the day hashing out business. But after “every day’s business, they ate dinner at various taverns … which were sprinkled liberally throughout the city. Eventually, dinner ‘clubs’ formed in which eight or more delegates would regularly dine together at a time. These clubs were for delegates from all the states, and their informal membership typically cut across sectional and ideological lines.” When dinner ended, the delegates would enjoy an evening tea with each other.
In an environment where hostility easily could have reigned, the delegates achieved the impossible because they spent time with each other outside the debating framework. That allowed the far more difficult conversations during the day to be productive.
Peacemakers know that to do what is necessary to achieve inner peace requires taming our schedules.
Most of us are not drafting a constitution or helping determine how we should interpret its provisions. But we are engaged in work that is arguably more important. We are trying to build strong families and relationships. We are striving to create effective work environments. During the holidays, we are yearning for family gatherings that help us capture the spirit of what we’re celebrating.
As we pursue those goals, we can learn a few things from the founders and other peacemakers. If you want to be able to have productive conversations with people in your life around difficult topics, spend some time with them doing anything but that. The world is filled with ways to connect with others: dinners, walks, board games, sports, golf, service, skiing, hiking, cycling, fishing, camping, dancing, watching British dramas that we convince ourselves are not just soap operas — the list is endless. Figure out what you enjoy and invite other people along. What you will likely find is that most people who disagree with you are not monsters or fools. Hopefully they will come to realize that you aren’t either.
And ask yourself: When you’re sitting down to enjoy Christmas dinner or open packages or celebrate Hanukkah, do you really need to talk with your loved ones about the most pressing issue of the day? Too many of us are consumed by certain topics, so much so that they prevent us from connecting with our loved ones over common interests. Deliberately set some of those difficult topics aside at times. The reward will be more enjoyable moments with the people in your life and more productive conversation when the tough topics do come along.
Cultivating an inner peace
Of course, setting aside the topics we care about the most is not easy. It is hard to let go. It requires an inner discipline and peace that too few of us have but that we can all cultivate. Peacemakers take the time for habits that develop inner peace, which then permeates outward into the rest of their lives, especially their conversations.
Because peacemakers come from nearly every background imaginable, not one of them has the market cornered on techniques to achieve inner peace. Those who believe in the divine often rely on prayer and religious practices. Others use meditation and mindfulness. Some rely on professional therapy. Many use exercise. All find ways to free themselves from the technological manipulation of our age.
I’ll touch on a couple of habits that seem especially useful during this time of year. The first is time management. William Rehnquist, the late chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, once said, “For all of life’s disparities in talent and wealth, each of us is given exactly the same amount of time in each hour, and in each day, and in each year. It is a limited amount, and it is impossible for anyone to be so rich in ‘time’ that he can enjoy every single one of the things which time may buy. So, … there are choices to be made. But it is very important for each of us that these choices be made consciously, with as much knowledge as possible of their consequences.”
If you want to be able to have productive conversations with people in your life around difficult topics, spend some time with them doing anything but that.
We are always tempted to add more to our plates. I am guilty of this as much as anyone. Maybe more. And I am certainly a proponent of spending our time doing good. We do not want to be so protective of our schedules that we end up not engaging with our world. But peacemakers know that to do what is necessary to achieve inner peace requires taming our schedules. They deliberately carve that time out of their days. They recognize that the rest of their time is so much more valuable when they take care of themselves mentally, emotionally and spiritually (if spirituality is important to them).
Perhaps the most important practice is setting aside a designated time each day to pursue their own peace. For some, this may be first thing in the morning, the moment they roll out of bed. Others may choose to do it over lunch or even during the day when they transition from one stressful activity to another. The precise time is not important. What is important is finding the window that works for you, then treating that as sacrosanct.
We may tell ourselves that by taking such time, we are giving up other, better, even more selfless activities. That is an understandable temptation. Delivering cookies to our neighbors is good. Taking care of the poor this time of year is divine. Writing a clever and fun Christmas card and letter is always nice. Ensuring every friend in our life receives the most thoughtful, personalized gift imaginable is laudable. But it may well be that we need to sacrifice some of those wholesome things for the better goal of achieving inner peace. The joy we might bring our neighbor by delivering them a thoughtful gift will soon become joyless if the price we pay is being short-tempered and stressed with our family.
For those who are Christians, I think this is part of what Jesus Christ meant when he said, “For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always.” Some activities are worth doing, but they may be worth doing later or differently. Perhaps we can push off some of the service we might be inclined to do over the holidays until after the New Year. Our neighbors will feel loved if they receive those cookies on January 15. And we can always serve the poor throughout the year, rather than pushing to do it mostly around the holidays.
Another habit that both science and experience have proven fruitful is journaling. Studies have consistently shown that journaling is good for our mental health. It can help reduce depression, anxiety and stress, which in turn can improve immune function. It helps those dealing with trauma to recover faster. It can help us develop a sense of gratitude. In short, it can help all of us develop a sense of inner peace. When you are carving out time in your schedule to develop your own sense of inner peace, add journaling to that window. It will be well worth it.
Better conversations
In all this, I do not want to lose sight of why we are spending time with others and developing a sense of inner calm.
Our goal is not to avoid difficult discussions. Those habits — along with many of the others I discovered — allow us to understand others better and control our emotions when the time comes for difficult situations. We may want to keep the conversation light around the dinner table, focusing on jokes and lighthearted topics in which everyone can bask. We may want to start off a holiday with our own spiritual practices and journaling.
But later that night, a difficult discussion may be necessary about a family member struggling with alcoholism, or a brother who can’t hold down a job, or an abusive parent or sibling, or a political issue, or any number of the myriad challenges we all face. Those conservations will be so much better if we have implemented the habits of a peacemaker ahead of time.
This story appears in the December 2024 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.