What I Can't Ignore When I Walk: Diversity

I have one of those "head in the clouds" dreamer personalities that would by nature blissfully ignore the practical realities of life to whatever degree possible. So it has become my choice of a pedestrian lifestyle in a city like Santa Monica that quite literally keeps me grounded in some of the harsher aspects of our present reality. Lately there have been three things in particular that I have recognized as impossible for me to ignore in my walking world. My next three blog entries will focus on each of those: 1) the Messiness and Beauty of Diversity, 2) the as-yet-unsolved problem in our society of Abuse of Power in our families, schools, churches and businesses and 3) the ongoing challenge of Change and Progress as people and planet collide.

The Messiness and Beauty of Diversity is one of those things I find it increasingly difficult to ignore in my walking. I could have chosen to conduct my social experiment of a pedestrian lifestyle anywhere--including in the homogenous town of 300 in rural Michigan where I grew up. In that area the people all have the same color of skin and most even hail from the same part of Europe. You will hear no language other than English spoken there or the views of more than one political party expressed. The "look" is basically the same across the board as are the levels of education and economic status. And one faith is held almost exclusively by the residents, with only two of the numerous variations of that faith even significantly represented.

In sharp contrast, I cannot walk 6 blocks in Santa Monica along my typical paths without hearing the music of 2-3 languages, seeing a rainbow of skin colors and types of attire, or encountering those with dramatically different faiths and political views from one another. People without homes and incomes live along the pathways of the luxury hotels and condos so that I am brought face-to-face daily with both economic extremes. There is little about either the messiness or the beauty of diversity that I can ignore or hide from in my chosen lifestyle.

But for me it requires being a walker in this coastal city which deposits the world at my doorstep. Just living here--diverse though the city is--would not have automatically exposed me to that diversity. Walking everywhere is what has allowed me to begin to see things whole. Just as I could have cloistered myself away somewhere in a world of sameness like the rural town that gave birth to me or the "wealthy, white, suburbanite" culture I spent years of my adult life dying a slow death in, I could choose to avoid diversity in an urban setting as well. I could drive from parking structure to parking structure in a cocoon of a car and choose isolated groups to participate in and never learn either the lessons the beauty of diversity teaches me on a daily basis or ask myself the hard questions about the messes it creates.

When we cluster by race or by creed, by country of origin or by age, by social status or any other demographic, we lose the capacity to see things whole. If our "kind" is all we are ever exposed to--in any category--we begin to adopt the traits of only one face of humanity, without even realizing that it is happening. If we are not intergenerational, for example, we lose either the wonder of childhood or the vitality and reform of youth or the power and productivity of the peak years or the wisdom and patience that only life experience can bring. Whatever age group we isolate ourselves from is where we are losing out. If we do not integrate races, we lose out on the general traits each is known for and become lopsided and less than whole. If we are too afraid to expose ourselves to differing views from our own in faith or politics, we never refine and balance our own thinking. And if we choose to ignore either of the extremes of the socio-economic spectrum, we can easily hide from some very hard questions that need to be asked.

But it's messy to live that way. Every day in my walking I see some of the conflict that putting diversity together brings. The rich resent the poor for messing up their playgrounds and landscapes and the poor resent the rich for not finding better ways to share the whole. The races and cultures each wish the others would be more like them instead of learning from each. The young mistakenly think they know everything about life already before living it, and the old think there is nothing of the unseasoned vitality of youth that could in any way benefit the whole. It's rare to meet a person who prefaces any of his or her political or religious views with, "I realize I could be wrong, but..."

These are broad generalizations about the conflict diversity brings, but I watch them play themselves out as I walk on a daily basis. It's enough material for many books on the topic. But this blog is not the place for all of that and is mostly about a quest for learning to see things whole. Most days I simply wish there were a way to pick myself and everyone else up above the earth to look down on the situation and see how it looks from a distance. Then perhaps we would see how truly beautiful diversity is. How much it adds to life. And how complicated we make our own walks by fighting or ignoring that diversity instead of welcoming it, learning from it and eventually even embracing it--till the richness of the tapestry it creates is so stimulating that we can't imagine living any other way. Perhaps when that day comes we'll venture far enough outside the cocoons of comfort we create for ourselves to go out walking--with and among and alongside people who don't look or act or think much like we do.

Downward Nobility

My favorite phrase for balancing the good of the whole with the good of the individual is this one: downward nobility. Right within the expression itself is the secret I've observed to individuals being willing to dramatically sacrifice for the good of the whole.

The term "Downward Nobility" is not original to me. Watts Wacker, a futurist who was with the Stanford Research Institute think tank when he published an article in 1997 about the Dream Era in history projecting what we are now seeing quietly spring into reality was my first source for uncovering and thinking about the pairing of those words--downward and nobility--in stark contrast to the Upward Mobility trend of past decades.

The secret to a willingness to go Down instead of Up the ladder, is a recognition of the Nobility and ownership that already exists. I once attended a seminar in early childhood development that provides a tangible picture of the psychology behind this. The presenter emphasized how difficult it is for children to share anything with another child before they reach the age of 3. Something developmentally happens by the time a child is 3 that allows her or him to understand the concept of ownership. Try taking something away from a 2-yr. old and giving it to another and your ears will let you know immediately the developmental phase of understanding ownership which allows for sharing has not been mastered yet! But once the concept of ownership is finally grasped, the child becomes much freer with sharing possessions.

The dynamics are similar for adults. Much of the materialism of our culture arises from being stuck as grown-up toddlers who haven't yet deeply enough learned the secret of how worthy each of us is individually and how deeply the whole belongs to us. We run around frantically trying to collect things to prove we are valuable and that we are "owners" and that we are special. We haven't learned yet that it's already all ours. The whole belongs to all of us. To enjoy. And to take care of. We're not going to increase our individual worth or value by greedily stockpiling as much as we can gather around us like frantic 2- yr. olds trying to make sure no one takes what they're not sure belongs to them in the first place.

When we find ourselves frantically chasing material belongings, we have lost sight of the fact that we are already Nobility and the proud owners of the Whole. We are Princes and Princesses, Kings and Queens, Knights and Ladies, who have the incredible privilege of enjoying and caring for all of the people and the planet as a whole. That's what the new Nobility will soon look like. Our new Upper Classes will one day be the people who have tapped so deeply into that truth and allowed it to permeate their behaviors that they are free to enjoy without being driven to possess and to hold all they own with open hands for the world around them to freely share.

If you know you own it all, you don't have to hoard anything. You can let it all go at any moment for the good of the whole, trusting you will have exactly what you need in your hour of lack in return. Instead of the picture of a panicked 2-yr. old screaming over the departing object that has just been pried out of his or her hands, life can become a great adventure in which what you have is taken and multiplied for the good of others when you share it. Then you can watch as the love and energy and joy that comes back to you wraps around you like a rich and fulfilling romance with the whole. That's what we're hungering for in our toddler-like states anyway: adventure and romance. And we have nothing to lose if we give it all away--IF we recognize who we already are and what we already own.

Spiritual experiences are the new status symbols Watts Wacker projected back in '97 for this era in history--replacing material possessions. The shift has already strongly begun. I started my coaching business in '98 foreshadowing much of what I now see coming more strongly into play globally. Spiritually intense retreats around the topic of individuality and worth became one of the most popular services I offered. People paid the kind of money normally spent on latest entertainment devices or major wardrobe pieces or vacations to sit around with a small group of people and discover what made each person 100% unique and therefore irreplaceable and of infinite value to the whole. The deeper that kind of work went, the more passion and purpose each had and the freer each became at letting go of material possessions.

When you know who you are and the global Treasure you are as part of this New Nobility that every person alive can belong to, dramatically simplifying your tastes and your belongings for the good of the whole becomes second nature. It is the natural outflow. You automatically find yourself willing to go Downward instead of just up and up and up, because you recognize you were already at the top to begin with. Mother Teresa who lived one of the most non-material lifestyles on the history books continues to top "most admired people" lists no matter how materialistic our culture becomes. And I believe that admiration is the hidden Downward Nobility in each of us longing to be the kind of people who are known for giving it all away but unsure how to deeply enough own our own royalty enough that we feel free to do it. Let's be a part of starting that trend--of mirroring for each other our Nobility on a daily basis so we become more and more comfortable with letting the material things go and having the incredible spiritual experiences that giving and sharing and caring about the whole bring.