A Culture of Acceptance

In everything we do we must become more. We must become better at our jobs. Better to our partners. To our children. In everything we do we must seek to grow. The issue we as people struggle with most is acceptance. Indeed as a culture we are trained to NOT accept others. We live in a culture where to be in one must act a certain way, wear certain clothes, think in a certain pattern. If they don't we refuse as a people to acknowledge them or, worse yet, we rebuke punish and shame them. We teach this to our children and reinforce it within ourselves, even if we learn otherwise. We think "I know I am correct. This is right." even if it isn't. This is the struggle our culture faces. This struggle is only changed by self conscious and self aware behavior. It isn't easy. In fact you can successfully accept others for a long time just to find you didn't accept someone for some reason. But if we can all stop and learn to accept each other a bit more. We grow not just as people, a nation or as the world. We grow as a species.

One of the huge hot topic situations we face right now is racism. Racism is not accepting, even if it is done in favor of another person. To truly accept someone you must not see them as they are on the outside. You must try to understand them for who they are as a person. To understand someone you must embrace their past, their passions and who they are. And you won't always agree with them, that is what makes it accepting and not copying them. It's hard to accept people sometimes but sometimes they can really help and support you.

An area close to my heart as acceptance goes is sexism. From a young age I was brought up by my mother. She was very strong of heart and cared and accepted everyone regardless of age, gender, race or disability. She had been treated rudely by her boss before purely because she was female. I have also met people who struggle with their own confidence because people refuse to accept them as the gender they relate to. Sexual harassment is a form of sexism and should NEVER be accepted. As people we think we have to be a certain way. That isn't the truth. We are each unique individuals. How we see ourselves should always be accepted and never be treated as an excuse to be bad to us.

In the world we live in disabilities happen. Some later in life, some from birth. It can be hard to interact with those with disabilities. I struggle with some mental issues in truth and any disability can make a person feel uncomfortable about themselves. So you should accept them treat them normally. In reality that's all anyone really wants.

So what is the end point and value of all this? In a culture such as this, where we as a people already struggle with tensions as far as finances and illness are concerned, we must strive to be better people. We must look beyond stereotypes, beyond hierarchal pretenses, beyond what we see. We must see the human being behind everyone, we must hear their stories, understand their hearts and minds, and finally accept them as who they are. Because if we can do that, we can stop fighting over silly things. We can become a united existence. We can live with peace and love for one another.