Saturday night I had the privilege of going out to a bonfire get-together to celebrate a friend of mine’s engagement. He had proposed earlier that day and wanted to have a bunch of friends and such get together to celebrate that night. It was a really great time, but one thing was pretty clear shortly into the evening: this was a crowd of people different than me. There were a number of cowboy hats, boots galore, belt buckles, huge trucks, country music, and yes… line-dancing. It was such a great night and I think, in part, because I was out of my “usual.”
That’s the problem with life. We get so busy spending time around people who are just like us that we can start to lose an appreciation for variety, for uniqueness. I was talking yesterday briefly with a student about how… undiversified our area is. There are so many good things about this area, but we do tend to lose out on the cultural diversity that the United States is really known for. But even still, here, there are different kinds of people. People that see life differently than we do. And how do we handle them?
I think that, although it’s natural for us to want to spend time simply with people who see things the way we do and will agree with us most of the time, there is such an opportunity to grow by spending time with those outside of that circle. But to be quite honest, there is very little chance that you will ever really do that unless you specifically decide to. It won’t happen on its own. It requires you going over to that person you see in the lunchroom who is different than you and just getting to know them. It’s a matter of asking someone you know believes differently than you about what they believe and just getting to hear it rather than arguing it (and I am not just talking about religious belief here).
White people tend to hang out with white people. Jocks tend to hang out with jocks. Nerds tend to hang out with nerds. Loud people tend to hang out with loud people. Young people tend to hang out with young people. And while this isn’t necessarily bad, it can keep us from learning from those who are different from us. So be intentional and branch out and find someone different than you that you can get to know. You and I have so much to learn from those different from us.