 Interconnection
and Commonality:
Oft-Forgotten Factors in Celebrating Diversity
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Having written
about creating inclusiveness and practicing
cross-cultural skills in everyday communications for the
last four issues of this newsletter, I thought I had
pretty much wrapped up that theme with last month’s
issue. However, while visiting a friend recently in
California, she commented that she had played a poem
entitled, “Not One Alike – Yet None So Very Different”
from my CD of poetry as an ice-breaker in a corporate
training session on Diversity. She claimed that it had
a powerful effect in prompting a discussion about
commonalities among people in the company which later
led to a constructive dialogue about differences.
Curious, I borrowed her copy of my book “The
Wholehearted Journey” and read the chapter that is
opened with that poem. To my dismay and consternation,
I realized that in the prior four newsletters in which I
laid out key practices and qualities for celebrating
diversity, I had left out one very essential practice –
recognizing our shared humanity, our intrinsic
interdependence, and the basic connectedness that binds
us together as people in community. So here is an
abridged summary of key suggestions and important
questions offered and raised in that chapter.
1. Acknowledge our interconnectedness
in the big picture.
Did you know it
is a biological fact that if you place two living heart
cells from different people in a Petri dish, they will
in time find and maintain a third and common beat?
This fact, writes poet, Mark Nepo, holds the secret of
all relationships. He says, “It is cellular proof that
beneath any resistance we might pose and beyond all our
attempts that fall short, there is in the very nature of
life itself some essential joining force. For if two
cells can find the common pulse beneath everything, how
much more can full human hearts feel when all our
excuses and fears fall away. This drive toward a common
beat is the force beneath curiosity and passion. It is
what makes strangers talk to strangers, despite the
discomfort.”
If only this
drive toward a common beat could be the force that draws
us as a planet to take care of one another, despite
political and economic boundaries. On a large scale, I
wax philosophic and idealistic, but the corners of the
world that each of us occupy is a great place to start!
Consider this advice from Albert Einstein: “We are part
of the whole which we call the universe, but it is an
optical delusion of the mind that we think we are
separate. This separateness is like a prison for us.
Our job is to widen the circle of our compassion so we
feel connected with all people and situations.”
We are being told
by physicists the world over that no matter how deeply
we look into the makeup of material being - the
biological level, the chemical level, subatomic level-
we see that life forms are interdependent,
co-conditioning and co-evolving. Every human effort,
civilization, thought, and spiritual insight, requires
and is supported by the whole of organic life. Martin
Luther King, Jr. said the same thing in a different way
decades ago in The Trumpet of Conscience: “It really
boils down to this: all life is interrelated. We are
all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied
into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one
directly affects all indirectly.”
2. Recognize your brethren.
There is a
Hasidic tale of an old Rabbi who asked his pupils how
they could tell when the night had ended and the day had
begun. “Could it be,” asked one of the students, “when
you can see an animal in the distance and tell whether
it’s a sheep or a dog?” “No,” answered the Rabbi.
Another asked, “Is it when you look at a tree in the
distance and can tell whether it’s a fig tree or a peach
tree?” “No,” answered the Rabbi. “Then when is it?” the
pupils demanded. “It is when you can look in the face
of any man or woman and see that he or she is your
sister or your brother. Until you can see this, it is
still night.”
While we have all
experienced moments of daylight with those with whom we
work and share community, I think we would have to
agree, at least by the Rabbi’s definition, we are all
working the night shift. We act as if we cannot relate
to the person in the other department, the person from a
different culture, the person with a different skin
color, the person who speaks or walks or dresses
differently … completely ignoring the fact that what we
have in common with other people is far greater than
what makes us different! We all yearn for contentment,
hold dreams for ourselves and our loved ones, fear the
unknown, grieve our losses, celebrate achievements,
imagine the future, pine for the past, wonder what
tomorrow will bring…
How do we begin
to recognize and appreciate the interconnection between
us? How do we extend the gift of courtesy to one
another in the midst of daily pressures? How do we
extend respect and support to one another in work
environments that promote competition over cooperation?
How, as we are swept up in the steady flow of minutia,
do we connect with one another rather than be
inconvenienced by our differences, whether they are
differences of opinion, cologne or communication
styles? How do we keep the presence of mind to notice
each other as we pass in the halls, even daring eye
contact with the person in the next car as we crawl side
by side through rush hour traffic?
3. Blow the
dust from the other’s eye.
Of all the
effects that changes in the 21st century work world have
brought to us as workers, perhaps the most profound has
been the replacement of our old sense of security with
that of insecurity and vulnerability. In many ways,
just to be alive is to be vulnerable, but what happens
in an environment of massive lay-offs, of mergers and
acquisitions, of what business writer, Peter Vaill, so
aptly referred to as “the permanent white water of the
business world”? I think the vulnerability that we all
feel in today’s work world prompts us to put up a
protective armor. The spirit of “Kumbaya” slips right
out the door as a new spirit enters…the one that warns
us to look out for Number One.
The survival of
the fittest mentality does not bring us together; it
tears at the seams of the blessed fabric of human
community. We must work to mend that garment, perhaps
with the silken threads of our new vulnerability.
This
vulnerability is a gift, because in the attempt to bear
the weight of it, we find ourselves reaching out and
taking hands with anyone and everyone who will make a
larger circle that will help sustain us in our own
uncertainty. What prompts us to join hands may be fear,
but once in the circle, we find ourselves drawn by
something even stronger, the gravity of hope, connection
and mutual support. We are like the antelope in West
Africa; it is because one antelope will blow the dust
from the other’s eye that two antelopes walk together.
How do we cultivate the antelope spirit with regard to
one another as we journey through life, side by side?
4. Judge not,
and look for the best in others.
We assume that
each of us comes into the world with both a unique set
of gifts as well as a unique set of limitations. We
hope that our gifts will be seen and appreciated and
that our limitations will be overlooked. In the
meantime, however, we cannot help but take notice of
other people’s shortcomings. We would be wise, however,
to recall Aesop’s fable: An elder Crab said to her son,
“Why do you walk sideways like that, my son? You ought
to walk straight.” The Young Crab replied, “Show me
how, dear Mother, and I’ll follow your example.” The
Old Crab tried but tried in vain, and then saw how
foolish she had been to find fault with her child.
Inspired teachers
admonish us to remove the beam from our own eye before
we attempt to take the splinter from our brother’s eye,
to become acquainted with our own demons before we try
to become angels. Our ability and propensity to “judge
not” is probably in direct proportion to our willingness
to view the world through the lens of our own brokenness
– our own tendencies toward selfishness, greed,
arrogance, disregard for other people and our
cowardice. Each of us must deal with our particular
blend of gifts, problems and woundedness in life. By
claiming our own faults and frailties, we are less prone
and anxious to point out those of others.
We must, each of
us, cherish the grain of our own wood before we can
fully appreciate the grain of one another. This means
accepting that we are strong and weak, wise as well as
ignorant, right about some things, wrong about others.
It takes courage to face our personal shadows but this
is required if we want to cultivate relationships based
on generosity, understanding and compassion – the
qualities upon which a healthy community thrives.
5. Bring the
soup or hold the lamp.
Life seems
somehow less painful and lonely – more hopeful and
beautiful- when our experiences are shared and confirmed
by those of others. Although each of us is unique,
there are familiar responses and doubts and joys that
let us know we have kin. We all know joy, and we all
know sorrow, though we laugh and cry in different
voices. Our hopes and dreams vary, but what sets us to
dream is the same. We differ from one another in what
we do and don’t do – but not in what we are.
That we need one
another is painfully obvious. One of lovelier truths of
human life is that whatever we are experiencing, we can
be sure to meet another on the road experiencing the
other side. When I am down, you may be the one to cheer
me up; when you are sick, I’ll bring the chicken soup.
While one of us grieves in darkness, the other will hold
up the lamp. As I express in the “Poem of the Month”,
all of us experience life “in the backdrop of triumph
and tragedy, merry-making and melodrama”, but
fortunately, we take turns. Surely our being here on
earth is as much for the purpose of supporting the lives
around us as for experiencing our own. In the words of
Mark Nepo in Book of Awakenings, “We are not responsible
for all that befalls us, only for how we receive it and
for how we hold each other up along the way. “
6. Resolve to
stand heart to heart, even when you can’t see eye to
eye.
Thich Nhat Hanh,
the gentle Buddhist poet and teacher from Vietnam, says
of compassion, “It is through our compassion that we
care for the dignity, well-being and integrity of every
person around us. Our capacity to embody this quality,
simple as it may seem, is the strength that can change
the world around us.” What if we made a habit of
looking at the people around us each day and choosing
someone who we think could use a little compassion, and
finding some small way of offering that gift? If such a
habit were woven into the fabric of our families and our
workplaces, I believe it would change the world, or at
least our experience of it.
We all live in
the constant fear of being judged by others, while the
empty space between us is waiting to be filled by a
simple gesture of honest caring.
Rudeness, the
absence of this caring, is a symptom of living our lives
as if our time was money. We need to start a campaign
to eliminate rudeness from the workplace and replace it
with the sacrament of small considerations. Our hearts
and lives are fed by kind words, small decencies and
gracious behavior. We are fed by words like “Excuse
me”, “I’m sorry”, “Please, go ahead”, and other simple
courtesies. Our spirits are also richly fed on
compliments and praise, even for seemingly insignificant
acts like holding the door for someone, asking to refill
someone’s coffee when you are going for your second cup,
or noticing the updated photo of someone’s grandchild on
their desk. It is the gravity of these small kindnesses
that pulls us into communion with one another.
7. Make a
practice of kindness.
The great writer,
Henry James, once said “Three things in human life are
important: the first is to be kind. The second is to be
kind. The third is to be kind.” A more current
writer, Wayne Dyer, shares similar advice when he said,
“If you must choose between being right or being kind,
always choose KIND.” When discussing in my workshops
the idea of making kindness a practice at work, many
wonder why we should consider responding with kindness
to situations of ignorance, cruelty or injustice.
Offhand, I can think of think of a few good reasons.
First, kindness
might be your best option! We could fight fire with
fire, but that only escalates the situation. But why
play a game that we find distasteful in the first
place? Instead, we can demonstrate the power of
kindness. Water works better than fire when trying to
put a fire out. As Gandhi once said, “Taking an eye for
an eye is a great way to blind the world.”
Secondly,
sometimes kindness is exactly what other people need
most when they have behaved in an inappropriate or
offensive manner. Have you ever said or done something
hurtful to someone not because they deserved it, but
because they just happened to be in the path of your
arrows? Often we are not the target of people’s anger,
but we happen to be within range. What if we were to
give people the benefit of the doubt that we were not
the intended target? Who knows – their cat could have
just died, their child might be in trouble at school,
their mate might have just left town without so much as
a note. As Plato put it, “Be kind, for everyone you meet
is fighting a hard battle.”
May we come to accept a little more, day by day, our
particular place in the larger scheme of the world and
our connection to one another – placing with the
greatest care the small stone of our own lives in the
larger mosaic. May creating inclusiveness and
celebrating diversity be less about seeing eye to eye,
and more about resolving to stand heart-to-heart,
appreciating the grand commonality we share will all of
humanity. As I express in the poem below, not one of us
is alike, yet none of us are so very different. Person
to person, moment to moment, as we connect and dare to
love, we alter the world …
Happy Spring!
~ Denise
© Denise
Bissonnette, March 2007 (If not used for commercial
purposes, this article may be reproduced, all or in
part, providing it is credited to "Denise Bissonnette,
Diversity World - www.diversityworld.com." If included
in a newsletter or other publication, we would
appreciate receiving a copy.)
Read Denise's
previous (February 2007) newsletter...
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