Diversify Me!

Much is being said about diversity these days. If some are choosing to forgo the night of glamour and boycott the Oscars this year, you know it’s a big deal.  As it should be.

In an interview with Robin Roberts on Good Morning America, Will Smith said that diversity is America’s superpower.  I couldn’t agree more - that is, with slight modification (in the name of diversity :-)).

Diversity is anyone’s superpower!

We all know it. We are better together than alone.

And yet, when pain happens, when injustice happens, when misunderstandings, disappointments and heartbreaks happen, when our emotions hijack our reasoning powers, we either lash out in anger and frustration or withdraw to our self-protective shells and claim isolation as our old trusted friend.

If nobody ever told you, here it is: Diversity is also painful. Diversity hurts too.

I recall how envious I was few weeks ago as I was listening to my friends sharing about their family visits over Christmas break.  They kept those close encounters to roughly 4 to 10 days.  Anything beyond that was simply too much to handle. Actually, the 10 day relative-togetherness stint was too much to handle for one family. 

Most of us nod our heads in silent agreement.  We know what they are talking about!

I process this information inside my permanently deformed bilingual/bi-cultural brain and can’t help but marvel.  We are talking here about family members, people of the same language, same socio-economic background, and same white Anglo-Saxon culture, often similar upbringing. And we can’t handle them beyond this carefully measured teaspoonful of time.  

What then can we expect when we consider larger North-American and even global culture?

Living cross-culturally for the past 20+ years, and having my non-English-speaking parents live with us during winter months on several different occasions has taught me one thing.

Diversity talk is easy.

Diversity life is HARD.  Really, at times it’s excruciating. For everyone involved.  Nobody goes scotch free. Everyone's scarred.

Day in, day out, it’s challenging to live with a constant questioning of your beliefs, assumptions and even core values.  Those things most of us take for granted as self-evident truth and an essence of our personal identity. 

Until somebody comes along and challenges this truth with their own perception of ‘self-evident truth’.

Practicing organic bi-cultural, bi-lingual, real-time 24-7 mini version of diversity under our roof became to me a microcosm of what our society is dealing with at large. Such gritty, unedited life quickly dispels much cherished romantic notions of living together happily ever-after. When these notions wear off, each of us is left with some hard-to-stomach truths which most of us would rather keep asnooze.  

As hard and humbling as these truths may be, they are something like birth-pangs of new, genuinely better, truly diversified life. Not just some illusory version of it.  

It may take a midwife or two.  

It may take a little – or a lot! – of pushing, and some crying, even wailing out!

But if nothing else comes of it, you and I will come out on the other side a gentler and kinder person. 

Less dogmatic and self-righteous.  

Better listeners.  

More attentive and truly present. 

Maybe even a tad more forgiving! A smidgen more humble.  

Then, and only then, we might be sufficiently suited to roll up our sleeves and start hammering out organic diversity not just on Oscar nights but every night.  

Not just in Hollywood, but in our neighborhood.  

Perhaps even in church.

Now that would be a cosmic miracle in its own merit.