Island Tolerance

"How was it growing up on an island?" people ask when I tell them I'm from Schiermonnikoog, the smallest inhabited island in the Netherlands.

I don't know. I've never grown up anywhere else. But I've thought about it.

The advantages are obvious: safe streets, zero crime, everyone knows everyone. You can't get lost as a kid. Close to nature. Tight community. Easy to make friends when there aren't many options.

The disadvantages are less obvious but more interesting. Limited people means you work with who you've got. If you think the plumber's an asshole, tough luck—you're still on the neighborhood association board with him, and when your pipes leak, he's your only call.

Everyone knowing everyone means no secrets. Have an argument? The whole island picks sides by dinner.

You can find solitude in the dunes, but you can't run a quick errand without it becoming a social event. Skip the small talk at the grocery store and suddenly you're "not very social."

But here's what I've realized: this constraint—the inability to write people off, to categorize them by a single disagreement—forces you to become tolerant. Not performatively tolerant. Actually tolerant.

When you can't avoid someone, you learn to emphasize their strengths instead of fixating on your differences. Everyone is fundamentally okay. Sometimes they do something you disagree with. You talk about it. Then you move on.

This isn't some enlightened philosophy we studied. It's survival. It's in the DNA of island life.

I think we've lost this in the wider world. We excel at polarization now—left versus right, this camp versus that camp. We celebrate our victories and tear each other apart over differences. We've become excellent at cutting people out.

Island life taught me the opposite skill: making what divides you subordinate to what connects you. Celebrating someone's unique strengths, even—especially—when they're different from yours.

In today's divided world, the ability to walk through the same door as everyone else isn't weakness or fakeness. It's mastery.

The singularity may reshape everything soon, or it may not. Political divisions may deepen or heal. You don't control that.

But you can control this: whether you write people off or find a way forward with them.

That's the island lesson. And maybe everyone could use a bit more island in their life.