This is the last evening of my family weekend. As I may have mentioned before, there is wide variety of family links and nationalities between us all. In addition our professional and life style choices are even more diverse (yoga teacher, management consultant, plumber, farmer, school teacher, aid worker, sports teacher, sculptor, weaver, international diplomat, musician, Alexander technique teacher, English teacher, theatre manager, entrepreneur, sheep shearer, music producer, machine salesman, IT Engineer, translator, psycho-analyst, PhD Student, speech therapist).
In spite of these differences it works just because we can all claim to be part of the same family in the widest possible sense of the term. If you were to arbitrarily throw together 30 random people with an equivalent variety of backgrounds you would not expect it to work, at best people would form into cliques or politely ignore each other (if they happen to be English). And yet if you put a family label on the event everything becomes possible, tensions are smoothed over, disagreements are temporary, differences are interesting rather than threatening, opinions are to be shared rather than opposed, life choices are what they are, judgement is absent and acceptance is universal. So how hard would it be to extend our concept of family to the whole world ? (I told you my objective is world peace) If people can get on within their families which are definitely not chosen then why can't they get on with everybody else ?
It's possible that I have an exceptional family, but I prefer to think that its normal. Either way I am extremely grateful to all you who are, could, or should be part of my family.
In spite of these differences it works just because we can all claim to be part of the same family in the widest possible sense of the term. If you were to arbitrarily throw together 30 random people with an equivalent variety of backgrounds you would not expect it to work, at best people would form into cliques or politely ignore each other (if they happen to be English). And yet if you put a family label on the event everything becomes possible, tensions are smoothed over, disagreements are temporary, differences are interesting rather than threatening, opinions are to be shared rather than opposed, life choices are what they are, judgement is absent and acceptance is universal. So how hard would it be to extend our concept of family to the whole world ? (I told you my objective is world peace) If people can get on within their families which are definitely not chosen then why can't they get on with everybody else ?
It's possible that I have an exceptional family, but I prefer to think that its normal. Either way I am extremely grateful to all you who are, could, or should be part of my family.
By exposing people to all the variety out there, globalization and new media websites are combining to threaten the reality bubbles within us. When our sense of reality feels threatened, we often reflexively retreat deeper into our perceptions, as a sort of defense mechanism protecting our reality. It's scary to have your little reality bubble burst.
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