Our difference is our potential waiting to happen! But the way through has to be experienced first-hand for it to really affect the change we want.
Arnold Weinstein grew up as an identical twin, which affected his perception of his identity. Most people could not tell him apart from his twin brother which meant he started life with a "blurrier" sense of his edges. It gave him a fairly unique take on the world right from the start.
Unlike most of us, he did not grow up with a "normal", fixed sense of self because he was so physically similar to someone else - his twin brother. People confused him with his brother so in some ways they thought he was someone else. He has grown consequently with a conviction that the outward forms we see may not be what they seem. For him it became natural to swim between what most people see as something fixed (identity), because his way of looking and understanding had become unfixed from life's experiences. It was therefore full of possibility and diversity. Life was a fluid interchange of possibility.
He experienced first hand the wealth we can harvest in our lives and work from this place and he highlights how the artist in us knows and experiences this, often unnoticed every day. Our left brained and logical self is celebrated daily, in the outer world in the ways we organise and strategise, but how much space do we leave for our right brain, our creative eye, the eye that perceives so much further afield from that which we can see?
I am a twin, although not identical, so I can't claim such an intense early experience as Arnold W. But I am an artist born from two cultures, and I can also relate to living in, what I now call "the space in-between", or the water that runs between landmasses; a hugely creative place. Let me explain.
We were recently visually facilitating at the Summit on Diversity in India and collaborating with Being at Full Potential. Participants, (myself included when I wasn't drawing) literally stepped into this "space in-between" during exercises and experienced it first hand.
In my case I found myself telling a story from my past of when my Spanish mother-in-law and I found ourselves in a rather passionate interaction about how we view life. We had somehow found ourselves outside of our comfort zones and swimming in this "space in-between" each of us. Here we were trying to express how we perceive life (and perhaps discovering words for that at the same time) to someone who we discovered then, might as well have been from Mars. What I unearthed in that interplay, helped me understand where we were both coming from; it literally bridged the gap between us. I could only have done that by listening to her from an unfixed place within me; from a place where nothing is necessarily as it appears. This is a very malleable place where I was able to listen more and be in the shoes of another thereby making the connection.
That conversation broke through so many cultural and personal barriers. I now see that she sees life much as a photographic scene that is fixed and unmoving, and I see it a bit like those desert mirages forming and un-forming depending on where you stand. No cultural norms here, or racial or societal difference, or blame or finger-pointing, just a sharing of different understanding from human perception.
The point here is, that two very different people were able to come together in their difference and sit and look at it together, as if comparing and contrasting brush strokes and colour usage as inevitably as artists will do.
Experiencing "Diversity" first-hand as illustrated in the story above and at the Summit in India, was transformative. Without having a personal taste of difference by bringing it "home" which made it intrinsically impactful and meaningful to me, "Diversity" would have remained a meaningless word instead of having the power to bring us together like musicians tuning their instruments to create a beautiful, new melody.
Then we left the Summit, got on planes to different parts of the planet and took ourselves and our learnings back home. We have each stepped back into the same homes, and work and relationships on our returns, yet have we each noticed profound changes. I have noticed the differences firstly in myself and then in the responses from others. My personal relationships, some of them historically quite challenging, seem more malleable and less rigid, with more possibility for creating something different between us. That water that seems to run in the spaces between us is richer, gentler, and more colourful, with a sense of far more possibility. What I thought wasn't working in my relationships has suddenly opened up to connection and engagement. I feel now that we are starting anew.
This personal experiencing has shifted us and given us such deeply powerful insights on something we thought we understood - "diversity". It has changed each of us and directly affected the ways we interact with others.
We have dived deeper than a surface interpretation of the word "diversity" might suggest - multi-cultural get-togethers for example. We have discovered new approaches to old patterns in ourselves and in our relationships with others and with our work and professional encounters. Seemingly unworkable differences between us have transformed into invaluable and enriching encounters, and brought new understanding and responses to our apparent differences.
I believe this new take on Diversity can work for the benefit of organisations; this quality of "in-betweenness" can support what we so often experience as struggle and separation to the enormous benefit of us all, not to even mention the bottom line!
Might we all dare to look beyond what we think we are and the labels we give to what we see, and delve a little more deeply passed the visible and into what lies just below the surface - our creative potential - in order to bridge the gaps and transform our professional and personal lives? I think it's worth a try!
This new space is the creative eye in action that reaps an infinitely rich harvest for us all.
https://ezinearticles.com/?Exploding-Our-Pre-Conceptions---Transforming-Difference-and-Tensions-Into-Their-Creative-Potential&id=9350469
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