Larning from Each Other
Elaine Kennedy shares her thoughts.
Every time you find yourself in the presence of another human being, there is an opportunity for growth. Also you are both treading on sacred ground”
I once heard this beautiful, if utopian, quotation at a Jesuit conference. Maybe today it might more realistically read:
Every time we find ourselves in the presence of another human being, and we ignore them, scorn them for their differences, deride their desire to follow their own traditions – which of course they have every right to do – we are desecrating that holy ground because we are forgetting that each and every human being is as important as we are. We also waste a huge opportunity for growth when we turn our backs on different cultures instead of embracing them, learning from them, and, by sharing our differences, building a wealth of positive experiences.
Living parallel lives without any attempt to cross the divide creates a damaging marginalisation. In the end when we separate ourselves, we end up becoming the separated or marginalised. When the inevitable end product of this process is that the ignored or marginalised turn against us, we all become victims, the devastating consequences of which the world is rapidly waking up to today.
It’s strange isn’t it how human beings have an addiction to creating marginalisation; there is no acceptance of the fact that what they are doing is inflicting the emotional pain on others that they have experienced themselves in one way or another. Who amongst us can say they have never been bullied at school at home or in the workplace? Who can say they have never been made to feel out of things or set apart? Who can say they have never been slandered with no means of redress?
These things are demoralising enough when inflicted from those of the community in which we were born and have lived. How must people feel when they find themselves uprooted and transplanted, for whatever reason, into a completely different, almost alien, culture. Different attitudes, education, religion, ethnicity, eating habits …. You name it; how would you cope?
This situation is surely an opportunity for growth, involving growing and blending our cultures as much as possible. It needs to be “blending” not “imposing”; it is utterly closed-minded for us to be sure that our ways are better than those of other people, and that we are superior in various ways, on the grounds that we have longer local lines of ancestry rooted in our psyche, and this inevitably leads to animosity.
Practically every war that has been fought through history can be shown to have been caused by these misguided ideas of “superiority”. A world crisis does not happen out of the blue; somewhere, perhaps far away, it starts in a family, a school, a church, or a town, perhaps our own. Lack of sensitive interactions and emotionally intelligent relationships between individuals led, over time, to bigger issues that became global. Human beings are mostly intelligent, talented, creative, but at the same time so ready to shun opportunities for growth.
Just a thought to finish with. If you don’t agree that each person on this planet has the same value as a human being as you do, where do you get your moral authority to believe that you are somehow a superior being? Remember, the ground was sacred long before we trod on it.