Appreciating Diversity

Delivered On: May 20th 2012
Delivered By: Lloyd D. Newell

This Magnificent World

What do you see and feel when you look around at this magnificent world? Do you see diverse colors, faces, landscapes, and seascapes? What do you learn from others who live in different cultures, use expressions you might not understand, and eat things you might not consider food?

A nurse in the Far East stood nearby as a couple from North America prepared to take home their newly adopted little son. He was 18 months old, darling, enthusiastic—and Chinese. The father looked at the woman who had cared for the child since he was placed in the orphanage. "Tell us how you teach him and how you show him love,” the father said. She smiled and responded, "You will do it your way. And that will be good.”

The interchange was not about parenting; it was about respecting the different ways we do things and the beauty of those differences. What if everything in the world were the same? What if there were no tulips in the Netherlands, no Alps in Switzerland, no gazelles in Africa?

What if there were no regional accents or Italian operas, no Great Wall of China? What if there wasn’t a culture that gave us the ruins in Mexico, the hula in Hawaii, and walkabouts down under? Some people eat fish eggs and love them. Others work in rice fields from a tender age. Some live in apartments and others in yurts. This is a world varied in its natural wonders and rich in local traditions. And isn’t that marvelous!

The more we get to know the world’s diversity, the more we feel at home here. Because even though clothing styles, artistic styles, and parenting styles vary widely, we can share an underlying foundation of kindness, generosity, and understanding. In this sense, we can all be bilingual—we speak our native language and the language of love. This is what adds the human touch to an already magnificent world.