#2: Diversity

Diversity is an interesting theme: we all want it to make our lives more interesting, but when it comes to people and their diverse cultures, colors, nationalities and religions we all secretly start comparing and -often – judge. We have this bias and stereotypes burnt into our system, even if we don’t want to and know that it is diversity that makes this planet and our lives interesting and colorful. I am the first one to admit it, even if it really hurts me to say so: I love diversity and I love it in people as much as in other things, but whenever I see someone from a different culture, some form of judging thought comes to mind automatically. I consciously must ask this thought to go away so that I can concentrate on the person and not the way she or he is dressed, the ethnical diversity she or he represents or the language he or she speaks. Mostly, this thought only lasts a second, but still, it’s there.

I was invited to this very different event, a forum, on the other side of the planet and while I was expecting an experience rich in diversity, I wasn’t prepared for what would be my surroundings during 3 XORDINARY days of my already not very ordinary life. 2000 people, 111 nationalities and a quite even distribution between women and men. A setting hard to reproduce anywhere else, so different and diverse that diversity becomes the normality. And what a beautiful environment this makes up for. A place where curiosity takes over bias at each new encounter, at each person you look at, at each new contact you make.

Ok, given that it was a gathering of mostly brilliant scholars, scientists, young hopes who’s inspiration it is to make the world a better place, open minded business and government leaders and some of us passionate representatives of Civil Society, you hardly can call this your everyday crowd. Though this takes nothing away from the extraordinary experience that, if you are able to mix up enough diversity, bias and stereotypes cancel themselves out naturally. And the void created is filled with possibility and opportunity, making each encounter a new opportunity to learn, to understand, to share.

And the strangest thing was that I believe that no one of us was actually thinking about this extraordinary void of bias, we just bathed in it, consciously or unconsciously. I suspect that most went go back to their everyday lives and dove right into their habit of judging again, some without realizing that the 3 days they just lived brought so much more joy and opportunity to their lives. I suspect it will be the case for me and that the “one-second thoughts of bias” will keep on creeping up on me, though I wish and secretly hope that this experience has cured me forever of this trait!