I love diversity.
Lots of people say that, but as soon as someone with an opposing view crosses their path, they get angry.
They like their kind of diversity.
I try to appreciate people with all kinds of different lenses.
Before I has LASIK surgery my vision was horrible. If my glasses fell off my bedside table at night, I’d have to do the upside down plunge on my bed and practically stand on my head to feel for them. If I didn’t do that, the chances I would step on them were high.
Once I had LASIK the world was totally different. I not only could see well, I could see peripherally. While my glasses corrected my vision pretty well, they had their limitations. Contacts were great, but I had dry eyes and sonetimes they were uncomfortable or cloudy. I saw things differently with them, too.
Every view was reality for me – based on which lenses we use.
Everything goes into making our vision of the world. Our culture, our family life, our friends, our religion, how people treat us – the reality and what we perceive. Our IQ, our street smarts, how we feel, our traumas, our joys, our challenges, and our outcomes.
It’s fascinating to me. I have four siblings – not one of us views the world the same way. We share some similarities, but in other ways we are far apart.
I hope I never get to a place where I feel I own the only valid lens. I hope I always treasure the different paths and perceptions others have traveled the other way.
We are beautifully different – and sometimes infuriatingly different. Still, what fun it is to have great conversations from diverse perspectives and change each other as we go through life. I hope I always know I don’t have it all worked out.
Invest in those things you love. I’m investing in diversity.
“If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the
world safe for diversity.” – John F. Kennedy
In the Box, Out of the Box 