“The cheetah enjoys pulling others around, but when it is being pulled around, it complains that its spots get soiled.” – Zimbabwean proverb
The beauty of life centres on her diversity. To keep us amazed and curious, she unravels herself to us in different perspectives, giving each of us a little secret about herself. That is why she has moulded our senses in ways that make us all differ in everything we do.
No person really knows what he or she is going to get until we get there. She has offered us a box of values and beliefs and inspires us to select the ones that sensate our sensitivities.
And this has contributed to what and which priorities we focus on. These choices affect how we individually use our times, talents and treasures.
A sermonisation of diversity cannot end without highlighting the wonderfully different ways we all look and talk, our ages, our visible features and our invisible qualities.
Altogether, it creates a beautiful mosaic loaded with potential for our greatest good and that of society as well. Interestingly, the beings’ life has bestowed this wonderful essence of our beauty upon, have very little respect for it. Many of us have very little tolerance for diversity, and for that matter beauty.
Beauty as art, must be appreciated. As a science, it must be studied to garner understanding about its essence.
This means, diversity should ideally be the most important subject around us. Sadly, we are always paying lip service to diversity and finding ways of getting people to ignore the wonderfulness she embraces each one of us with.
Our educational system, both formal and informal strives to mould us into mechanical beings. Instead of harnessing what comes naturally to us, we let the trends and cults dictate what talents and treasures are important and which ones are not.
There are many individuals who cry themselves to sleep because they cannot live as their hearts dictate.
What is plaguing our societies is a negative culture that stipulates that instead of getting to know each other, listening to each other and appreciating the wonderfulness imbibed in each of us, many of us use our interactions as opportunities to mould people into replicas of ourselves and our systems.
We are always on the drive to convert others to live according to our values and beliefs. From religion to politics, the surprising majority amongst us strive to assert our ideals upon others.
We are not encouraging individuals to build inner convictions about what to believe and value. Rather, we are forcing ours upon them, thereby making them vulnerable to identity conflict and psychological confusion.
What we need to understand is that the nature of diversity is aimed a inculcating a love-for-self-and-a-love-for-others attitude in us. It inspires us to pool ourselves together and think creatively about how to get each person to contribute towards our greater good to generate a synergy. Diversity creates stronger bonds than uniformity.
It does so because it employs genuine compassion, laced with generosity to relate to others. Instead of expecting everyone to wear a white shirt, it seeks to understand circumstances that would inhibit a few amongst us from doing it. And then it encourages them to give their best irrespective of the circumstances.
Sadly, the surprising many amongst us would rather relate to a ‘robot-like’ replica of our thoughts and words, than a full-blooded human whose views and ideals travel parallel to ours. We do not even realise that such an attitude is a mark of ‘narrow-mindedness.’ We are so focused on ourselves, we do not realise the unpleasantness of our behaviour or how that proselytizing insults the dignity of the individual.
Our rejection of the ideals of others insults not only their intelligence, but also their freedom to make choices regarding their uniqueness. It is like telling the monkey, it must behave like the squirrel otherwise it is not fit to live in the animal kingdom.
We are all involved in this journey called life. The rules of the journey demand that we look out for one another. It does not say we all have to move our left foot at the same time. We must keep our eyes for one another and make an extra effort to rid the path of thorns and weeds to make the strides of others easier. Just as we want the best for ourselves, so does every person out there.
The interesting fact is, once we are living together, our well-being depends on how well others behave and theirs on how well we also behave. When we reduce our relationships to every individual for him or herself, then our backs end up broken from carrying unnecessary loads.
Life is beautiful and full of goodness. Likewise, we can live it beautifully through goodness. All we have to do, is to remind our ambitions that a life without love is barren. We need to ditch the fearful attitude of worrying about the future and concentrate on making the moments memorable.
At least we know from experience that the future is created today. Thus, if we learn to accept each other for who they are through compassion, the greater the broad-mindedness tomorrow would bestow on us. But when we demand people to be like us, the greater will be the aggression and violence when the scales fall off their eyes tomorrow. “A word to the wise,” they say “is enough.”
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Kodwo Brumpon is an executive coach at Polygon Oval, a forward-thinking Pan African management consultancy and social impact firm driven by data analytics, with a focus on understanding the extraordinary potential and needs of organisations and businesses to help them cultivate synergies, that catapults into their strategic growth, and certifies their sustainability.
Comments, suggestions, and requests for talks and training should be sent to him at [email protected]
