Unity and Diversity

Hi, and welcome to your Daily Mindfulness. Today, I'm going to talk about unity and diversity. So if we focus too much on what differentiates us, then we can start to create division in our life and conflict often follows. If we focus more on what unites us, then we create a space for unity to grow and kindness often follows. So though we may all seem very different on the surface, you know, we may, as different people look different, have different lifestyles, different belief systems, opinions, religions, and cultures, ultimately, we are all here together as one humanity.

We all have pain and pleasure, loss and gain, love and heartbreak. We all have hopes and fears. We all have weaknesses as well as strengths. We all want to be safe and protected. None of us wants to suffer.

We all want to be happy. And we are sharing this brief time here on earth, in this period of history, we're facing the same challenges and triumphs and beauty and stresses of all of it together. At the deepest level, we are so much more alike than we are different. And the ability to see this reality is now more important than ever because as the challenges before us all grow in the world, we're going to be much stronger when we stand together to face them. The challenge, though, is that our minds have evolved to focus on differences and overlook our common humanity.

You see, for the past 200,000 years of human evolution, our ancestors lived in small tribes. To survive in those days, involved caring for and cooperating with and protecting the people in our tribe. Others from the outside who looked or acted differently were regarded with fear, suspicion, or even aggression. So our modern mind still operates in much the same way. It tends to focus on what differentiates us.

And when someone seems different, it can bring up those same feelings of aggression, fear, suspicion. It can bring out some of the worst in us, both individually and collectively. But we can train our minds to see our unity, rather than our division, our common humanity, rather than our differences. Here's how. As you go about your day, deliberately notice similarities between yourself and others.

For example, when you're lining up at the grocery store at the checkout, take a few moments to really look at the person in front of you and get a sense of how they're just like you. Perhaps pondering to yourself, you know, this person probably has loved ones they care about deeply, just like me. They have pain in their body sometimes, just like me. They too have known sadness and experienced loss, just like me. They too want to be loved and accepted, just like me.

Try this, especially with people who seem different to you and people who belong to groups that you feel maybe an animosity towards, or you look down upon. In this way, we build bridges between us instead of burning them and we come together as a unified front to promote peace, sustainability and equality in the world. As always, thank you for your practice and your presence here with us. And let's now settle in for today's meditation.