It Starts with Hello

One of the most thrilling things I’ve been doing since returning to Denver a month and a half ago is going to dinner with five strangers. Time left arranges tables of six strangers around the world every Wednesday night, where it all begins with a simple hello.

After three years of traveling the world—including the last three months spent on warm sand beneath palm trees in Mexico—coming home has been met with unexpected challenges while living in a very cold place and navigating an intense graduate school schedule. Yet, in the midst of this, a simple hello has been a flicker of light.

Looking around, I see a world gripped by fear. I see a post urging people to wear blue on a certain day, though the message behind it remains unclear. And I wonder—why not purple? I live in a country where less than half of the people need to agree to make a decision. A friend of mine attended a protest on Monday. When I asked him what his message was, he said, for everyone to interact with more peace and love. That made sense to me.

On both microcosmic and macrocosmic levels, I see people who believe they have only two choices—neither of which looks good. Much like the couple in the image for this blog, we all walk through a tunnel of uncertainty, surrounded by division. But as we move forward together, the red and blue blend into purple—the space where true connection begins. What happened to the American spirit of win-win? One of the key principles in my book, Healing Happens: Stories of Healing Against All Odds, is that we can create a vision beyond the hand we think we’ve been dealt.

Division does not have to be inevitable. There are models for unity, like one I experienced firsthand in my former yoga community. One of the committees of ten people never made a decision until all ten were in alignment. They believed there was always a better way, and that the right choice would feel right to everyone.

They also trusted that a decision didn’t need to be rushed—alignment would come in time.

Later, in a relationship training course, I learned a powerful concept: when two sides are in disagreement, the contrast exists so each side can recognize something valuable in the other. I now use this principle as the foundation of my corporate conflict resolution programs.

On a deeper level, spiritually speaking, contrast may even serve a higher purpose. Being human offers us the opportunity to experience God through the five senses and the full spectrum of human emotions—to encounter both the light and the shadow that coexist as part of the whole. Contrast draws our attention to these differences and invites us into an adventure of curiosity, allowing us to understand more aspects of both this world and the divine. In that way, disagreement becomes a sacred template for discovery and expansion.

What we need is to discover the purple—the intersection where division dissolves into connection, and where new paradigms emerge that satisfy all sides. The eagle soars above, not choosing sides, but seeing the bigger picture. What if we did the same? What if, instead of deepening division, we sought understanding? Behind our differences is a shared intention.

Social psychology research has shown that it only takes one voice within a group to inspire a higher perspective. Polarity and division breed more of the same, but a simple hello can begin to bridge the gap.

We don’t need our leader to make this happen. We just need one person to be a leader and step forward through the tunnel. One voice. One choice to connect.

And it starts with a simple hello.