Let’s focus on the beauty of our differences
Ihave enjoyed an extensive career divulging various aspects of the rich and diverse Emirati culture to thousands of visitors to the UAE. Throughout my career, I have met people from different social and education backgrounds with varying cultural and traditional practices, and beliefs that are unique to where they are from. It has been fascinating to not only learn about how they live, but also listen to the questions they have about the culture, traditions and history of the region.
My focus has always been to find a common ground through storytelling and answering questions about the Arab and Muslim culture at large. The method of presenting these facts or my answers to the questions is simply my own way of offering food for thought to humanity.
It is no secret that the world that we live in is going through significant changes. Of note, almost every day there are stories of wars or impending wars that suggest that instead of coming together and trying to understand and accept each other, we appear to be disconnected and intent on destroying each other and the world we live in.
My aim is to try to improve the connection among us, instead of dividing, and furthering the distance. While our differences are a fact of life, let’s focus on the beauty in them. Our differences have unique attributes that allow us to better understand each other. We are able to discover the intriguing ways that another human does something. Their way of living, thinking or believing makes life interesting and offers us a different perspective on the things around us. We should try to enjoy and pay more attention to the similarities we share. Our differences, however, highlight that we may have a tweak or a twist on similar matters. From food to dress, lifestyle to social protocols, or attitude to culture and traditions, we have so much in common. This is because of the fact that we are all from the same species — we are all members of one human race.
It is with this fact in mind that I’d like to point out the following; we all have the same hardware. I use the word ‘hardware’ loosely to refer to our eyes, ears, arms and legs.
We experience similar emotions (same motherboard) — we laugh, cry, get angry, experience pain, and joy. We can be happy or sad. We all get hungry and once we eat we feel full.
The one thing that we all have different versions of is our software. This involves how we go about life, and is as unique as our fingerprints — one of a kind, yet it comes from the same sources such as our parents, culture, tradition, political identity and for most of us, it is our religion or the ideology we submit to, too.
The thought that I would like to leave you with today is that we must find a common ground and a few basic principles to agree on, in order for us to get along. For me, it must be no killing, no stealing, no lying, no cheating, no injustice, no discrimination, and the list can go on. Our goal should be that no harm can be inflicted on another human being. I would like to extend this to not harming the environment that we live in or the animals that share this environment with us. Think of it as being similar to the agreement that there should be no smoking on airplanes or inside malls. While there are a lot of issues that we still need to be working through, our aim should be to get to know each other better through meaningful dialogue. We should also try to empathise with each other more. We will always have disagreements, but we can all agree to disagree without including violence against each other or insult. Let us focus on taking care of each other and our environment — it’s what’s best for all of us. I want to hear from you, what you’re curious about so we can get to know one another, our unique styles of living, and discover together why we do what we do, and the rich traditions and culture that drive it. Let’s find a common ground.
We will always have disagreements, but we can all agree to disagree without including violence against each other or insult.