We live in a wonderful time of existence.
Endless opportunities, food, wealth and health in abundance.
Yet we still see the mindless actions of some that want to make an “impact”, to right the so-called wrongs or just go for their 15 minutes of fame.
Which, unfortunately, the media grabs hold of these events -often inflating – and continues to perpetuate the drama, fuelling the divide, the war against something, anything.
Oh, the great divide of humanity. But it’s not just in the adult arena we see this subtle war of differences being played out.
If we took a look over the school grounds of young children we’d probably see similar divides take place. It’s a case of birds of a feather flock together. A naturally occurring phenomena in nature, that we need to address, the differences filter, the one that makes us look at those who we perceive to be “not like us”.
Friends are more often than not, like us in some way, similar interests, beliefs & passions. If not it can be hard to build the common ground that develops into friendships.
So kids are a classic for this, they say it as it is, if they spot something that is different they usually vocalise it, “Daddy, why does that man have only 1 leg?”, “Why are that person’s eyes different?”, even colours, if our children are not exposed to that little difference in pigmentation and see someone of a different colour it’s “why is their skin that colour?”
Now just guessing here but I’d reckon this differences filter was imperative for our survival thousands of years ago.
We needed to keep guard on anything that could threaten our existence, and it would probably be required to be suspicious of anyone that didn’t fit the tribal mold.
But these days, we still see this ancient part of the tribal brain firing. It creates the, us versus them mentality – the tribal mind – and it’s a pretty antiquated model of living in this global world we now live in.
Yet the challenge lies rewiring our brains that have been evolving for thousands of years to what they are today. And so much of how we operate on a day to day aspect is out of “unconsciousness”, our conditioning and experiences create the pathways which determine how we interact with the world, and so, so much of this is defined whilst we are just little saplings…
So how can we shift our lives to be more accepting of that which is different to us, that which is not part of our tribe? For if we truly want to create a world whereby our children can break the shackles of these antiquated beliefs we need to do something and quickly.
I think the answer lies in increasing our consciousness, which in turn will increase our ability to “respond rather than react”, increase our ability to see the similarities in others, have empathy for others and connect on a deeper level to those which are not cut from the same mold.
Teach our children that we are at our core, the same. Despite skin colour, ethnicity, religions, political beliefs, diets anything that we usually hang our hats on as a label as “I’m a….”.
We are all truly the same, a bountiful bundle of emotions and energy contained in a nervous system traveling on a tiny blue water planet hurtling through space at startling speeds.
When all is said and done, the great divide is the very thing that will bring us together. The ability to observer patterns, and then observe that that observation can be turned to that of acceptance and love. Not discrimination and differences.
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