Where to Now?

No matter where you look these days diversity is ever present. I think of diversity as being synonymous with differences. I used to think that you needed another person as part of your experience for diversity to play out, such as a relationship, collaboration, or a team sporting activity. But more recently I am finding more points-of-view in my own thinking. Me, myself, and I are not agreeing so easily on everything as we used to.

In fact I thought disagreeing within your self was schizophrenia rather than diversity. But what I am beginning to believe is that it is the start to seeing the world through someone else's eyes. This insight is the first step to understanding others or empathy--to be and see the world through someone else's experience. When I have this experience with someone I am having conflict with what I experience is fear. And fear triggers survival behaviors; fight or flight or both, depending on the situation.

Right now I am in the process of writing a co-authored book with one of my best friends. I respect him and I love him as a person. We are significantly different in race, background, age, life experiences, religion, and many other dimensions of diversity. Yet I find it easy to listen to him and his differing views on relationships, the war, religion, the strong issues involving race and sex in the U.S. In fact, I always come away transformed in my own thinking by his non-threatening way of communicating.

I find I am more influenced by him than all the news media--paper or cyberspace--around. Over time, I've sought out people in my life who are significantly different in their thinking than I am without feeling threatened. I have concluded that my reality is not only not right, but is in constant transformation--as is life.

However, what I have also noticed is that we have a spiritual commonality. We are spiritual beings having a human experience--the ultimate source of conflict is nonalignment of this principle with human belief and behavioral systems. We are all interconnected--what happens to you will eventuality happen to me. We are one undivided family--the illusion of separateness creates ethnocentric conflict which breeds the apparent necessity for superior/inferior, right thinking/wrong thinking, best way/worse way, and the endless dichotomies the rule our thinking.

As I have stated previously, diversity is the most important phenomenon of the 21st century. Our willingness (not ability) to embrace it and make a reality will determine our fate on this planet we call Earth.