The following was a submission for 'Seniors Writing 2022' on the theme 'Diversity'
We’ve all been asked, way too many times. It’s a fall-back conversational opener, but it’s also a lazy way to think we ‘know’ someone when in truth it’s simply a means to mentally label and consign them to a metaphorical box. We’re expected to answer with a one word occupational ‘tag’; banker, teacher, mum, plumber, receptionist, CEO, nutritionist, lawyer, etc. as if it somehow summed us up. Is that all I am? Is that all you are? We are surely none of us so crudely and simply categorised? So readily consigned to a neat little compartment; the job title, the assumed stereotype, the preconceived notions, the cultural prejudices?
Many years back I was invited to submit a personal ‘update’ for inclusion within a small publication on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of my leaving high school – a place I had found largely pointless and from which I was only too happy to depart at the earliest opportunity on completing year 10 – a largely naive ‘boy’ of just fifteen years; so the anniversary year wasn’t even strictly correct as I’d actually left school two years prior to most of my soon-to-be HSC graduate ‘peers’.
With inspiration from something similar published in Brian Eno’s A Year with Swollen Appendices, I sent in a reasonably swiftly compiled and hence far from comprehensive, alphabetically arranged list of numerous ‘occupations’ or ‘qualities’ that I felt comfortable identifying with; that I felt might paint a picture of my various activities and evolving personality across the intervening decades. From artist, bisexual, curator and designer; through father, gardener, idler and liar; to motorcyclist, neuter, pacifist and reader; plus surfer, thinker, wanker, youth worker and much else besides. I think I hoped to subvert their expectations and shake up any residual mental pictures they might hold of their onetime classmate, assuming they remembered me at all which I felt was far from guaranteed.
We are all of us complex, multi-faceted individuals experiencing lives rich with variety and contradiction in every aspect of our being; tasks we undertake, thoughts we conceive, beliefs we hold, belongings we cherish, people we love, desires we conceal, habits we tolerate, actions we regret. Amongst his many insightful observations Albert Einstein once extolled, during a college commencement address in 1938 (please forgive the gendered language of his time), a desire that humanity exhibit “a sociable interest in a happier lot for all men” and “that every individual should have the opportunity to develop the gifts which may be latent in him. Alone in that way can the individual obtain the satisfaction to which he is justly entitled; and alone in that way can the community achieve its richest flowering” adding “we must not only tolerate differences between individuals and between groups, but we should indeed welcome them and look upon them as an enriching of our existence.” How simple it seems. Yet so far, and perhaps ever receding, from such a reality we still find ourselves.
I believe the simplest way to sidestep our lazy cultural preference for ‘black or white’ binary categorisations of our lived experiences and ingrained prejudices is to acknowledge, first within ourselves and then within all our fellow beings, the extraordinarily rich and complex amalgam of who indeed we are, and who perchance we might yet become. Rather than just me or you, us or them, Asian or African, male or female, Christian or Muslim, gay or straight, friend or enemy; recognise instead that every single one of these, and other, characteristics exist within a vast spectrum of complex possibility. A child of immigrants can be both Vietnamese and Australian; in Japan it is common to practice both Shinto and Buddhist faiths simultaneously; bisexuality may be widely misunderstood but is neither diminished nor negated through being so; and is an enemy truly anything more than someone we choose not to understand or over whom we wish to exert power? When we recognise the infinite complexity of ‘who’ an individual might be, we cannot but help to also recognise that we are all of us similarly, almost incomprehensibly, rich with a veritable kaleidoscope of variety and potential. We may have much in common, we may have much that varies, but every single one of us is uniquely suited, uniquely qualified, to be who we are. And if we are all unique, then surely we are united by that common possession of singularity?
Yes, we may form close bonds with others in whom we find one or two points of similarity with our own cultural background, philosophical beliefs, sexual preferences, occupational endeavours or sports of choice, but we and they are so much more than a handful of commonalities. The more we recognise the extraordinary richness of every individual, the more we see that indeed we are all united in and by our diversity. Plus the more it should be apparent that it is this very diversity that lends humanity, our individual and communal lived experiences, the sense of identity and belonging which at heart we all crave. We shouldn’t merely be tolerating difference and diversity but actively seeking, embracing and rejoicing in it. Our sense of self can at times seem intrinsic, ingrained, dominant, even supreme, but lets look beyond this learned individualist mindset and recognise the truth of humanity’s collective interdependence; the genuine strength to be gained from a unity of difference. A world rich and strong in diversity.
