Cecil Beaton said “Be daring, be different, be impractical, be
anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against
the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the
ordinary.”
I love this quote. I feel
different nearly all of the time, the only place I feel the same, or normal, is
when I am with my husband, children, sister, Mum and bestie, and they certainly aren’t
normal so I suppose that confirms I am not normal either. I’m not so good at being daring or
impractical ... yet, but I’m working on it.
I hope our children have inherited our ‘not normalness’, and they grow
up to be imaginative and daring. Who
would want to be a creature of the commonplace?
Most of my life I have limited myself to only spending time with
people that I deem different, impractical and fun, the ordinary and serious
seemed so dull. However as I grow up I
am starting to think a) I may actually be very ordinary and fairly serious and
b) maybe nobody is ordinary, and everybody is a little different, so I could in
fact enjoy the company of a much broader cross section of the community. Interesting, sounds good in theory but I am yet
to see how it will be applied in real life.
M. Scott Peck said
“Share our similarities, celebrate our differences”, this idea intrigues
me, just because people don’t agree with me, or even really appeal to me, doesn’t
mean I have to instantly dislike them. I
am also starting to discover that I am not always right, I know gasp in shock!!
I am starting to think that often there is no right thought, feeling, opinion
or idea and all these things can change regularly. I am trying to embrace and accept the beauty
of the mystery of life, I don’t feel so compelled to convince people of my way
of thinking, I don’t know very much at all, so I would be better off keep my
mouth closed a little more often and my ears open.
As a society how do you think we cope with differences? I think we generally feel uncomfortable with
different. People with different
beliefs, thoughts and ideas challenge us to think and make us consider other
options. People who choose to live their
lives differently, educate and raise their children differently, worship
differently, love differently, dress differently; they can all be confronting,
it makes us think we might be doing something wrong, we feel threatened. Natural instinct is to dislike, discredit and
disagree. It is only our own
insecurities that make us unable to handle and accept different.
It helps me to remember that the person who is different is generally
not being different to antagonise me, annoy me or change me, often they are
just being themselves. They see the world
a little differently, they have had different experiences and relationships and
different things are important to them. I
am convinced the different is all part of the perfect plan, I just have to
accept it.
So
I am going to try so much harder to open my mind, not change my values, but not
be so dismissive and derogatory of different, a very big challenge for me.
