Variety is the Spice, Doncha Know

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind." - Dr. Seuss

I've been thinking about us and the ways we tend to classify and sort ourselves and one another.

We seem to have this incessant need to compare ourselves with one another and make judgments based on those comparisons. I understand that competitiveness stems from our most basic need for survival. And yet, I feel that as we surrender to the love that is the truth of who we are, we will become more open to accepting the differences, variances and preferences that make us individuals.

Differences don't have to separate us. One thing that excites me is that in spite of the attempts of governments, religions and gargantuan bodies of water to separate us, people still find ways to unite. Love always finds a way to bring us together.

If you think about it, superiority and inferiority of personages is a farce, the same kind of unloving ideas that have separated races and classes and countries for millenia. What makes us think we are superior to the man on the street corner with the cardboard sign? What makes us think we are inferior to the billionaire with the three-story mansion? Maybe both persons are living the life of their dreams, and who are we to decide one man's dream is superior to another's? We may have our personal preferences, but everyone else is not obligated to share those preferences.

Do you know what I think the great equalizer is? The common toilet. Everybody has to sit down and take care of business, regardless of whether they are a leader of a great country or a lowly servant. True, some may use a bidet as opposed to common TP, but we all have our humanity in common - the same needs, the same drives, the same hungers and thirsts, the same eliminatory, and circulatory, and other systems.

What differs between us is a matter of preference, teaching, sometimes brainwashing, individual talents and intelligences, and the application of these. So what? There is more about us that is alike than is different.

We do have our own preferences, and we don't have to like everything about other people or their actions, but we can make room in our hearts for acceptance of others and acceptance of the fact that we don't have to be right and make everyone else wrong. And we don't have to accept other people's judgments, either.

We all have the God-given freedom to choose, and the blessed responsibility for creating a life that is meaningful to us, and joyful, and loving, according to our own preferences.

And thank God for the differences that make us all so interesting. It would be a boring world without differences. Variety is the spice of life, and God gave us an extremely spicy world. Our appreciation is in order.