All my life I have felt like an outsider to everyone else. I could be laughing and smiling outwardly but inwardly feel distant. I never felt like I was one of them. Even my closest friends are nothing really like me. I've always been different from everyone else, and I recently found out why.
Now, to clarify, I don't mean my physical appearance. If you were to know who I am, you'd know about me being a fun-loving and caring pastor, husband, and father. I'm talking about personality traits and characteristics that seem to separate me from other people. It's easy to say, "we're all different," but sometimes it's not easy to explain why. One day I was hanging out with some friends and I just began thinking about my relationships with each of them. Then I began to wonder perhaps what it is about me that made them want to be friends with me. This was quite possibly the first time, if not, then the most recent that I really evaluated myself as a person. I realized we shared some similarities but not many. What stood out the most was our differences. It dawned on me that it was our differences that made our friendship unique.
Taking a look back through my life, there was one thing I noticed about myself that stood out more than the other traits and such. This is the one thing that makes me feel like some sort of outsider, even to my friends and family: I don't particularly care about what other people think about me, which gives me more personality.
Now, hear me out. Of course, everyone hears others' opinions and can consider them at their own desire. Yes, I hear what people say, but here's the thing, I don't take it to heart. I don't feel a need to satisfy others' ideas of who or how I should be. I guess that at some point in my life I figured out that it doesn't really matter.
Early in my life, I made up my mind that I would dress, walk, talk and think how I wanted to instead of trying to impress others through fashion, behavior, conversation, and ways. I’ve always openly spoken my opinions without fear of the consequences that they could bring. I was very open with myself to others because I was determined to be me. Those who hide under the shadows of others often live a challenging life. It becomes challenging because you compare yourself to your friend circle instead of being yourself.
This is where the beauty of diversity comes in. Diversity by definition is the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, and sexual orientations. Your friend circle should be a collection of differences. Differences that you have accepted as normal for your friends. Diversity is needed in your friend circles. No group should all see the world in the same context. The joy of diversity is seeing, hearing, and feeling differently but still able to stand on common ground. Evaluate your friend circles. Make sure that you are being true to yourself and that each of your contemporaries is doing the same. After evaluating, you will find as I did that there is a certain joy in being able to be who I wanted rather than who everyone else wanted. You will further discover the amazing feeling of a great diverse friend circle. God crafted each of us individually to be the unique person that we are. The lesson to take from this is to just meet people and discover who they are. Don’t try to change them or make them conform to your way and ideas. You'll certainly meet some interesting people with interesting stories. But you'll never hear them if you can’t accept the beauty of diversity.
