First person plural

Catching up with my Buddhist Christian friend B after church today, we came to talking about the "community agreements" that groups, online and in person, increasingly use to frame their work together. I told her about the one I propose to my classes, developed by our office of Civic Engagement and Social Justice with a psychologist (now at another school) whose specialty is Daoist cognitive therapy. As I told B how we'd spent most of an hour discussing it in the first official meeting of my first year seminar, I realized much of what I said came from things I'd learned in turn from conversations with her.

What I stressed was that the goals, if you take them seriously, are aspirational - not easy to do, and not things we can do just by wanting to do them. This means we'll surely fail along the way, even as we try to get better at them. We should be compassionate with others and ourselves when that happens; we'll help each other grow in this. This connected to my framing point that it makes a big difference if we think of the pledges as articulated in first person singular or plural. I urged the second: letting it be plural acknowledges there are things I can't do on my own but we can help each do. That's why we seminar!

The funny thing is that B was enthusiastic about these ideas, as if they hadn't come in part from her! In particular she thanked me for the way my presentation built in compassion at our own imperfection. But I'm pretty sure it's from being a witness to her efforts to be a better listener, citizen, friend, person that I learned about that...