From Awareness Builder 101: Chapter 32

32. Embracing differences

 

Dare to be different! Be yourself! Well known statements nowadays and I love them!

 

For thousands of years people from so called “different” groups were not allowed to be themselves, yet the world finally starts to understand and slowly accept we all are different. We start to see being different is not a problem, not a disease, not something to be beaten out of people! On the contrary, it’s a gift, it makes the world a more colourful place and a chance
to create from.

 

It took long years of fighting where countless people even gave their lives whilst taking a stand for their human rights. Correction, their lives were stolen from them by those who tried to force their will upon them…. The so called ‘activists’ had to fight for women’s rights, gay rights, the rights of people whose skin doesn’t happen to be white, religious rights, freedom of speech and so on. The list is endless. The price was high. Gratitude and respect for all those freedom fighters!

 

Finally we can be who we are, say what we want. Be religious or not. Be gay or straight. You’re free to openly choose where you feel you belong. To the right, to the left, in the middle, sometimes left, sometimes right. Both. None of it. Whatever you choose, wherever you position yourself, in general we can say, as long as you don’t harm someone else, feel free to be and do as you like. Is the world finally growing towards being free from discrimination and indeed embracing differences? This would be such a blessing….

 

The last couple of years I see a shift that sometimes confuses me a bit. This is when we all have to be so equal, that differences are no longer acceptable. When those who say ‘I disagree’ are not accepted for having their different opinion.

 

I’m not (!) referring to people who hide behind their political, moral or religious (often limiting) beliefs and from there claim that something is wrong and that this gives them the right to make another person wrong. No, it are simply people who choose to live by certain standards and based on those standards they disagree with the standards other people live by. I see a shift that those who say ‘ok for you, but not for me’ become the rejected. An example is where I see shop owners who refuse to be open on Sundays, now are being forced by law to open their doors that day. Or folks who really prefer to go to ‘the ladies’ or ‘the gents’, having to use the gender neutral (public) toilets.

 

Are we indeed moving towards ‘embracing differences’ or is the norm
simply shifting? It feels there is a problem embedded in the word ‘different’. It includes we compare. And when human beings compare, they categorise and judge. Yes, we judge. All of us!

 

So here is a thought, instead of ‘embracing differences’, what about ‘embracing uniqueness’? Where it is a human right to be unique which is what we are by nature. It’s a given, just check your DNA.

 

 

Journaling questions for this chapter:

 

 

How are you uniquely different from others?

 

 

How do I want to be looked at, as different or as unique?

 

 

How do I choose to look at people, as different or as unique?

 

 

© 2026. Alex Verlek, Coaching Works International.

 

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