What If?

What if we really accepted all men and women as equals? What if we didn't discriminate between race, ethnicity, creed, gender or sexual orientation? What if the word "minority" didn't exist? What if?

Sadly, I fear we would create the divide anyway. We are genetically predisposed to create sides (at least I believe such). I reach this conclusion after many years of experience as "us" and as "them".

As a young woman, I was part of a club, whose members, somehow, were all blond and bright. We looked alike; with our long locks parted in the middle. We dressed similarly and sounded the same. But, there were some who chose to read romance novels while the "majority" read classic literature. The readers of romance novels were mocked. We found a "minority" within; however petty.

In business, after many years struggling to gain acceptance in the board room, I found myself choosing sides. Not a man-woman issue, but the issue between marketing and operations. It was a continuous, and often nasty, battle between two groups. We all worked for the same company; we all worked toward the same profit margin; yet we chose sides - us versus them.

It is always us versus them: Americans vs everyone else; men vs women; gay vs straight; Christians vs Jew; and, the list goes on.

I believe we get lost in the issue of majority and minority. We say the "majority rules", but it is in fact a "minority" that rules us - that handful of people in government and those giants of industry. They are not really part of the majority. It is our wish in life to be on the "winning" side - survival of the fittest. But, I suggest we can survive with tolerance and acceptance; a win-win equation.

If we survive together, will we not have more plentiful resources of experience, knowledge and culture? But that means opening oneself up to new ideas and embracing the differences. I can hear the mantra now, "but those people are different"; said with a disapproving tone.

We teach difference. We perpetuate difference. We mock difference.

What if we start teaching similarity and symbiosis and mutual interdependence? What if we stop being scared of what is different and embrace the beauty of "not alike"?

What if?