By BONNIE J. GORDON

The questions I ask first when strategizing about anything are:

1. What outcome do I want to achieve?
2. How will I get there?
3. What are the advantages and/or the downsides of this plan of action?

These questions also work for clarifying what separates you and the person you’re talking with on a policy issue.

Suppose the person you’re talking with is from the opposite political party and they say access to quality health care is the most important issue to them. Since that’s really important to you, too, there’s some common ground to work from.

The rub, of course, is that your solutions will probably be very different. When both people have voiced their potential solutions, start talking about the advantages and disadvantages of each one. Being on the same page about where you want to go should generate at least some good will. You can go from there and even if you never agree about the exact solution, you will now know what separates you and what brings you together and there may be some room for compromise.

If there is something irresolvable in where you want to go, discussion is still possible. Reaching a solution is going to be a whole lot harder, but you may get somewhere. This situation usually centers on differences in religious or spiritual beliefs–deeply held ways of seeing the world. Abortion or gay marriage cannot be legal and illegal at the same time, for example. So how can we talk at all?

One way to approach it is to talk about how we can live together as one nation when we don’t agree, and about what areas of life should be legislated and which not. Another angle is building on things we agree on, for example, making abortion rare because it isn’t needed. While we may not agree about all the ways this could happen, for example access to birth control vs. abstinence, perhaps we can talk about how to support women who choose to give birth economically, so no one feels they have to have an abortion because they cannot support their child. You get the picture.

But how does this solve the basic question? It doesn’t. What it does do is remove the horns and tail from your opponent and gets both of you back to seeing each other as humans of good will. And that’s where you have to be to WANT to resolve things. If you think someone is a totally rotten human being, you probably should leave talking to them to someone who doesn’t think this, but don’t go leaping to conclusions until you try.

Even if you resolve nothing, you now understand why the person on the other side thinks as they do, which might surprise you. The Kavanaugh Hearing, as it played out among people I care about, showed me something. The two sides do not understand each other at all. Across the gulf of partisan politics, we’ve completely lost touch.

I will talk to almost anybody who will talk to me in a civil manner about almost anything. You may need to seek out people who disagree with you if you’re surrounded by people who see things your way, but I doubt you’ll have to look far. What I have learned from talking to everybody is priceless, and worth the occasional bad outcome. Do try this at home.

Next time, I’ll take a deep dive into how things got so polarized and what it means for the country.