In the city, I see a little bit of everything. On the subway, very few people look like me, and even when they do, I’m sometimes surprised to overhear them speaking another language. I love the diversity, but I’m also bothered by the fact that I notice it.
In one urban area near the border, I found myself surrounded by people from many different backgrounds. Mexican, Asian, and Polynesian cultures had woven together to create a richness I don’t often experience. What surprised me the most wasn’t the diversity itself. It was how welcomed I felt, even though I was clearly in the minority.
In another metropolitan area across the country, I stood next to a distinguished-looking middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and professional clothing. His fingernails were painted orange, and his make up looked far superior than anything I’ve ever managed to apply. As we waited together, I found myself intentionally setting aside my first impressions and reminding myself to see the whole peron standing beside me. I was frustrated that I even had to make the effort.
Learning to see
I grew up in a culture that had clear buckets for good and bad, correct and incorrect, right and wrong. Those buckets seemed to apply to everything. Nothing was off limits. Food choices, skirt length, words, hairstyles, music, and even people. Acceptance wasn’t discussed and differences weren’t celebrated. Uniformity and conformity were the expectation.
I’ve also spent much of my life living in places where most people look and sound like me. It was easy to assume we were all essentially the same. Nothing could be further from the truth. Even people who appear similar bring different cultures, beliefs, views, preferences, processes, and ways of seeing the world. Because those differences aren’t always visible, so they simply went undetected for much of my life.
Beyond what’s familiar
That’s one reason I love traveling to places with diversity. It’s also why those places still feel so novel to me. I want to think of myself as someone who welcomes everyone, yet I catch myself walking through unfamiliar places in quiet amazement, taking it all in as though I’ve stepped into another world. In those moments, I recognize the tension between my upbringing and the person I hope to become, the struggle of accepting the variations around me and valuing the simple humanity in us all.
So, I begin with awareness. I know this about myself. Maybe growth isn’t measured by how little we notice our differences, but by how quickly we remember the humanity we share. With each encounter and every new experience, I allow my heart and mind another opportunity to grow and to hold a little more of the beautiful diversity that already exists in the world. That growth can happen on a crowded subway just as surely as it can while walking the streets of my little Midwestern town.