Headlines say we're divided. I found unity on a Sunday morning in Columbus. | Opinion
In this 2025 moment, it's more important than ever to stop and pay attention when what is happening around you doesn't match the social media noise.

Karen E. Spierling is a Bexley resident and the third generation of Spierlings to have lived in Columbus. She is also a professor of history at Denison University in Granville.
Headlines and social media feeds tell us that we are now an America divided.
Amid too many examples to count, the most recent local evidence is the passage of Ohio’s Senate Bill 1, which suggests that our state government is at war with higher education, justified in part by the notion that there is some version of dangerous diversity that is threatening Ohioans.
Increasingly in 2025, the virtual world is one that reinforces feelings of fear and uncertainty — no matter what your position or life experience, it feels like everything that matters is under threat.
And sometimes interacting with strangers in real life exacerbates those feelings.
In this 2025 moment, it’s more important than ever to stop and pay attention when what is happening around you doesn’t match the social media noise.
Cultures mix on a Sunday morning
Take, for example, my recent visit to the Greater Columbus Convention Center.
It's a Sunday morning. Hundreds of people were there for the American Cheer Power Grand Nationals cheer competition. Sparkles and glittery things everywhere. Girls and young women dressed to the nines to compete.
The same morning at the same convention center, more than a thousand people were there for the Noor Islamic Cultural Center’s Eid al-Fitr morning prayers to celebrate the end of Ramadan. Sparkles and glittery things everywhere. Men, women and children dressed to the nines to observe a religious holiday.
Heading to meet friends in town for the cheer competition, I was swimming against a massive tide of cheer competitors and observant Muslims from a wide range of cultural, regional and national backgrounds and a range of observance levels.
I was overwhelmed by the humanity and positive energy of the moment — gorgeous fabrics, beautiful head coverings, colorful clothespins with encouraging messages, bows and streamers and makeup and smiling faces in all directions.
It was not the division, hostility or anger that dominate the headlines right now. It was a disconcerting combination of humanity, including women with face coverings and 8-year-olds in skin-tight cheer uniforms.
It was a paradoxical contrast of different pieces of our complicated American culture.
As I stood talking to my friend, she suddenly flew into action — a family dressed up for Eid had walked by, a mother and father both holding the hands of their young son. The boy walked right out of one of his shoes, leaving it lying on the floor. Not mentioning to his parents what had happened, he was just happily hobbling along.
My friend, dressed in her hoodie and joggers to watch her granddaughter’s cheer competition, ran to pick up the shoe and chased the family down the corridor. Just as she caught up with them, the parents realized they were missing a shoe.
There was great joy and profuse thanks for this small act of kindness in the midst of such a bustling crowd.
So many people. So many colorful, celebratory outfits for the day. So many real human beings watching out for each other.
As a country right now, we are seeing a lot of the worst of ourselves in headlines and on social media. It's easy to start expecting the worst of each other in everyday life, too.
But today, on a Sunday in Ohio, where the state government just passed a bill that wants to deny the depths to which diversity of all kinds has become ingrained in the culture of central Ohio and to suppress the importance of diversity and freedom of speech and of thought in public education, I went to the convention center, and I saw what I saw.
Karen E. Spierling is a Bexley resident and the third generation of Spierlings to have lived in Columbus. She is also a professor of history at Denison University in Granville.