If you’ve ever wondered what the title of Harper Lee’s wonderful classic 'To Kill a Mockingbird' means, fear not, I Googled it a good while ago!

In the story of the courageous and principled lawyer Atticus Finch defending a framed and innocent black man in racist Alabama in the late 1920s, a mockingbird is revered in America as a beautiful creature which does only one thing; it sings its heart out and makes wonderful music for people to enjoy. Therefore, according to the book’s character Scout, “it’s a sin To Kill a Mockingbird".

All sorts of essays and theories have been written suggesting that the meaning of the story is that innocence is destroyed by evil which prompts us to consider such deep issues of morality.

More straightforward, for me, and the great line I remember comes from Finch himself who suggests that “you never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…. until you climb into his skin and walk around in it".

Would that we could all do that.

Well, many people do, but many others stay in silos and look only at things from the prism of their own experience, sometimes very painful experience.

The genuine tolerance of the other person’s point of view sounds to me like a laudable principle in itself, but more so it would surely help us in improving trust in relationships in our own country where difference and intolerance have caused such pain and harm over history.

I thought of the Finch quote again recently, listening to the exchange on the Tommy Tiernan show on RTE when he interviewed Patrick Kielty. Kielty’s back story is well documented, his father was shot dead by loyalists in 1988 when Patrick was 16 and in the show he spoke with great clarity about the emotional difficulties his family had faced.

Indeed, he could well have remained closed off to the feelings of people of so-called opposing communities but he has a track record of reaching out in trying to understand their culture and beliefs, to climb into their skin.

In the past he has interviewed loyalist and republican combatants, has helped people in loyalist areas build bonfires as he interviewed them in a perceptive way and, among other contributions to understanding, has spoken about the mindset of different communities towards a shared island.

He did it again in the Tiernan interview, and in the process raised the controversy over the singing of 'Up the Ra'. He was able to do it in a powerful way because of his own loss and he did it in the context of challenging the south about whether they would make any compromise to northern Unionists in a future united Ireland.

“You can’t physically unite the island and have nearly a million Unionists up the road joining this country, without changing some furniture to make those people feel welcome,” said Kielty.

“What do you think they’d like?” asked Tiernan, in such a way that both men burst out laughing.

“I think you could probably start with not singing ‘up the ‘Ra’ in the changing rooms maybe.”

Tiernan: “That’s so harmless….”

“I know it is,” replied Kielty. “But you know, if you were asked to rejoin the Commonwealth and you saw the Northern Ireland ladies’ team up there singing ‘they’re up to their necks in Fenian blood’ and singing the Sash, you’d sit there and think to yourself: ‘Jesus, I’m not sure about that.’”

Tiernan nodded.

Taken at face value, that exchange alone portrayed a lack of understanding of people across the island of people with different views.

Note, Tiernan said the ‘Up the ‘Ra’ song was “harmless” and, indeed, that’s a view very commonly held. Yet, the other side of the coin is that many Unionists see the song as nothing more than a “glorification of terrorism".

It’s hard to imagine a discussion where people could climb into the other’s skin or even agree to disagree. One side sees the song in a very different context and is oblivious to what the other side is hearing; the other side hears the song and understands it to mean something more sinister and could never get into the mindset of those who feel it harmless.

The interview as a whole represented the challenge we have in this country in developing a greater understanding of the viewpoints, hopes and fears of the “other".

What many people will have missed is that Tiernan began that segment by suggesting that there was a “phenomenal amount of goodwill” from the south towards everybody in the north.

Yet that is something that is often unrecognised, not just by those on the Unionist right who bandy about terms describing Southern leaders as being “foreign”, but also by northern Nationalists who feel there are times when the South doesn’t show an affinity to their aspirations.

And, indeed, by those Unionists who genuinely believe that “the South doesn’t want us anyway".

In reverse, there can be a lack of understanding in the South of the Northern character, portrayed as hard-nosed, unreasonable and unbending. We, in the media, bear some responsibility for the lack of understanding across the island and society as a whole doesn’t think past the stereotyping of people.

We are a far more diverse and tolerant people, north and south, than is acknowledged in the media.

Kielty posed the important question, therefore, in asking what compromise southerners would make.

Overall, there are still deep misunderstandings between the communities within Northern Ireland and between north and south. Nobody is asking any one group to abandon their aspirations or their deeply and sincerely-held beliefs or abandon their cultural identity. As a friend of mine says “engagement doesn’t mean endorsement".

He also says: “In order to disagree well, we need to understand each other well.”

When we consider the hurt of the conflict, we far too often consider the legalistic or political angle rather than the human perspective; the fact is that the pain and loss suffered by thousands of families did not discriminate.

When the legacy debate is in the political arena, it leads to “inclusive victimhood versus competitive victimhood”, a term used by Professor Nurit Shnabel, from Tel Aviv University in a paper about reconciliation after conflict. A social psychologist, she writes about the process of trust, equality and positive identity where people on both sides exchange emotionally and psychologically.

Telling their story gives people empowerment and social exchange is part of that.

There is a remarkable group in the Middle East called 'Parents Circle', an organisation of Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost immediate members of their families in that conflict get together to tell their harrowing stories. It can be an incredibly healing process.

There are many, many families in our own country living with loss who have seen the deadly effects of the polemical dispute which has seen violence towards each other for centuries in a cycle that must be broken. Like killing the mockingbird, it’s an evil that has taken too many innocents.

So, there is a need to build bridges and a need to reach out in trust to listen to one another. And examine our conscience, like Atticus Finch said: “Before I can live with other folks, I’ve got to live with myself.”

Perhaps this society in Ireland will learn to live with itself and learn that, really, we are one community not two.