Perfecting One’s Self through Imperfections

Today I’m going to talk about a concept that I call “indiscriminate discrimination.” This is where we reject aspects of someone’s true identity because we have no frame of reference for it. I cannot tell you how many times I have been a victim of snap judgments in particular, character value judgments. If you allow me to broaden the use of that term, people have assumed that because I am in a wheelchair, I am unintelligent, or I am dimwitted because I have a speech disability. This is because they look through a myopic lens of their own experience. It’s only when they challenge their fear and engage the unknown not in retreat, but in a full embrace does the richness of untapped diversity get to receive full expression. If we don’t welcome diversity, or at least accept it we lose a chance to ground ourselves in who we are as people and the opportunity to share in the bond of collective human connectivity. When we shun diversity, we deny ourselves the chance to look into the well of human experience and deny the  imperfections which we have failed to recognize as diversity’s way of trying to make us evolve into a more perfect state. It is only by listening to those voices we think are dissident, that we can achieve harmony. If my parents would have chosen not to celebrate my diversity despite my societal imperfections, all my potentially and contributions to society would have been extinguished. By embracing our own societal imperfections, we allow ourselves to challenge our perspectives and explore the various paths before us that have themselves been blazed by imperfections. Thus, when we close ourselves to diversity through the intolerance of human experience we are choosing to disengage from the all perceptual possibilities that life has to offer. The past and the present are merely perceptual lenses with which we view the world. Diversity is the root which cultivates perception and allows us to have a dialogue with ourselves celebrating our imperfections, as well as our most perfect ideas. That is why our past and our history must be reviewed as the engine of diversity and must be celebrated.