After Tuesday’s election, half our country’s voters seem to be ecstatic and half appear to be morose, even angry. That would likely be the case no matter which major party candidate won.

From the losing liberal side, we now hear a chorus of “We need a conversation;” “What we say matters;” “Minding our speech can be a first step to healing;” “We need to listen to the anger, to the expression of disenfranchisement;” “Let’s get together to.…” (Would similar sentiments have been heard from Republicans if the Democratic candidate had won?)

The week before the election, Shirat Hayam presented a 92Y talk from 2015 by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the British philosopher and scholar. He spoke about religious extremism and violence committed in the name of God.

What stood out for me was his comment that we can have interfaith conversations, dialogues, etc., until we run out of words, and no meaningful difference will have been made. Rather than talking at one another, Rabbi Sacks said, we would do better to do something with one another. Build a house, clean up a park, stock a food pantry with people of other faiths [or politics] and you are more likely to get a better understanding of them than you would by sitting around a table and talking.

At some point, the euphoria half of us feel will have died down, and the other half will have moved up from shiva to one-year-level mourning. If the citizenry and the politicians can recognize that another such bout of acrimony is damaging to a healthy democracy, there might be an opportunity to promote an impetus toward unity: national service.

Not the draft of old, but a mandatory period of national service along the lines of what some 26 countries around the world — countries as disparate as Armenia, Bermuda, Israel, Korea, Ukraine — expect of their citizens. (Non-military service is available in most countries.)

In a Politico Magazine article from June 2015, retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal espouses the virtues of national service and speaks of his concern that “citizenship no longer demands a common experience — and so we no longer believe in a common future.” He continues, “The underlying purpose of national service must be to mold better citizens and bind our young people to one another and to the nation.”

Mandatory national service could be a way to mitigate the intense polarization evident during this campaign. Doing together, needing to work things through together, building or improving something together could be more beneficial than speaking to one another. Let’s not avoid talking with “the other,” but let’s not stop there.