Beauty in Differences, Diversity, and Inclusion – Love

The beauty in differences, diversity, and inclusion is what I want to briefly write on. Moving to Germany from Nigeria in 2022 for my Mater‘s programme, I started to have different perspectives and views.

It was really difficult at the initial time as I was not familiar with a lot of emotional feelings attached with color. I mean, I was just a normal girl in my country Nigeria, identified by maybe my state of origin and not by color as a black, female immigrant.

Moving to Europe – Germany

Living in Germany, my color became conspicuous as though it were my identity. Before I traveled, I only heard and read about the concept of racism, but I experienced it at some point since I moved here. Nevertheless, I am happy at the level of inclusion in the University environment. International students are accepted and welcomed. This is beautiful to me. Yes, different students act differently in their views of inclusion and acceptance of color, religion, gender, but this is not an article of complaints, rather of a way forward.

Indeed the world is a massive space occupied by people of different calibres, characters, norms, beliefs, attitudes, upbringing, color, religion, likes, dislikes, spirits, thoughts, interest, etc. Sometimes, it would be a fallacy to think it would be easy. It is indeed complicated and confusion is abound. Sometimes we feel lost, not accepted, sad, and misunderstood. It is so discomforting when we sometimes think that we got rejected or set aside because of a race we had no choice of choosing.

Difficulty in Associating

Difficulty in associating is experienced when we are forcing ourselves to fit into a group or an environment that does not accept who we are as a person? In a world of diversity, how can many people with these differences associate without conflict of thoughts, or ideas? Sometimes, we feel like we are not being understood, and the fact that everyone thinks they are right, makes it even more complicated. With all these thoughts rushing down the mind frequently, confused state of mind abounds indeed!

When we try to come out of our safe shells, we face the tough reality and the only thing we want to quickly do is fold back into our shells. Please don‘t! I said these to myself and I am putting it out here in words for readers. The set of students I met in my first University here in Germany were completely different from my amazing cohorts here in my new University. This helped me to understand that although some people are racist, some just exhibit an unwelcoming behavior to people they don’t like and not because of race.

Choose to come out, face your fears of being seen as less, and rise above the challenges. This helped me greatly. I became open, bold, happy, and willing to embrace, and it helped me integrate smartly and joyfully with my cohorts in my new University. Learn to be a fast thinker and learn how to handle situations that needs strength and will, also love yourself so much, this way you won’t blame yourself for every little failing of others.

Know this, you will never attain full clarity about others, just as we can never know what we can achieve until we start. The moment we start, we begin to gain clarity on the next thing to do in advancing our international association, inclusion, and acceptance. In all, love purely without any bias, be a good person, help when you can, associate, speak, laugh, and engage for we are humans and differences in skin is just color.

Practice Love – General advice

The most complicated part of existence is relating with diverse people. Different countries, race, cultures, religions, and a host of other different attribute I mentioned earlier. Yes, it is complicated, but it is also really beautiful. There is beauty in diversity, and some of the things listed below will make us associate happily.

• Kindness
• Peace
• Empathy
• Love
• Compassion
• Care
• Communication

If we embrace diversity, we will see how happy the world will become, and how much can be achieved by embracing togetherness. LOVE HEALS, LOVE ACCOMMODATES, LOVE FORGIVES, LOVE EMBRACES.

Photo credit: Beautiful pictures from https://unsplash.com/s/photos/diversity-women

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