What's up?
So I got some good coffee. This morning I want to talk about
diversity. Is diversity important. Let me tell you about my experience with that.
I'm from a really small town in East Texas called Emory Emory
By God, Texas, that's where I'm from the population sign said
813 people some of the best people that I've ever known are in that town. So here's what happened with me
I made a decision to join the military and my decision to join the military was out of desperation
what I did was I I left and went to college for three semesters until I partied my way out of that and
Then I moved back home and when I moved back home, that's when things really got started to get bad
I knew that if I didn't get out of there if I didn't leave
Then I was gonna wind up in a bad situation
so I took off and my
Recruiter talked me into this job. That was for smart kids. I was a linguist, so I went to language school
So at language school they were going to teach me
Vietnamese, I learned Vietnamese
Crazy, so I'm at this school on the coast of California and let me tell you what that was. Like I
Grew up in Emory, Texas, and if I had the window open at night
It's a good you know when I was going to sleep I could hear crickets
Coyotes and cows. That's what I could hear, right?
When I was in Monterey, California Monterey Bay up on the hill prime real estate
Overlooking the bay the ocean the Pacific Ocean. I'm laying in the barracks with my window open there and I could hear seal it seals
Barking at the bay. It's it was just
incredible the difference and
Keep in mind at the Defense Language Institute where I was at at the time
I think they they taught somewhere between 40 and 50 foreign languages and all of the instructors are
From that country my teachers were from Vietnam
so I wound up and
Probably the most diverse
community in all of the military and
For the first year in the Air Force at a DLI at this language school. I
compared everything
to Emory and the things that I would say was this isn't how the real world works and
I was calling the real world
Emory
How it was there
Now think about that for a second the real world
So my real world my experience of the world
up to that point in my life and what I had accepted as what is
Was Emory the way that it was there?
And this isn't really specifically about Emory at all
it's about my experience and
eventually, I found out that my experience up to the point to where I joined the the big Air Force the Air Force is a
Big place and then I'm at this language school where there's so much
diversity and people in thought and belief and
Getting to know these cultures and getting to know these people
It was incredible I found out that my experience
Up to the point that I joined the military was this was really small
Compared to the real world. The real world wasn't where I came from
that was just a small tiny experience and I had entered into a much bigger world and
one of the things that occurred to me at some point along the way is
this if
You want to fully experience your life?
And I don't care where you live. You can live in Emory. You can live in New York City. You can still have
diverse experiences of life and all you know
And really one of the easiest things you can do is open a book and read, you know
Watch a documentary of some kind just learn about other things and let me tell you gee rafi
That era in which you were born the community you were born into all of these things
Have influenced who you are
Completely all the way down to the very fiber of your being
These things have influenced who you are because you me or anyone if we were born on the other side of the world
500 years ago everything would be different
Everything would be different. So it's important to understand that there are different
Experiences there are different types of people and and and the key word. There is understanding
Let me tell you something. I didn't try Chinese food till I was 17 and I liked it
okay, and then when I got to the Defense Language Institute
And I was studying Vietnamese one of my best friends and he's still one of my best friends today
Jason Williams is his name. He was a Thai linguist
So he was learning Thai and I tried Thai food for the first time when I was 21 22 years old
I tried Thai food Thai food is my favorite food and
Listen to this it's so it's so fucking simple
But it's you if you don't pay attention to your life's experience. Sometimes you're gonna miss some very
important lessons
Until we wake up to the experience of our life we're gonna have the same
Undesirable things happen over and over and over again. So
Wake up a little bit pay attention and here's something very small
But it's very profound and it applies to everything
Thai food is my favorite
food I
never tried it until I was like 21 22 years old and
Guess what if I would have never tried Thai food, I would have never known
That it was my favorite food
If you don't try things if you don't get outside of the box that has been primarily
Constructed for you not by you
Okay
the trick is
recognising that and start dismantling
The parts that don't serve you that are causing you to be stuck in
Whatever area that you're stuck
Dismantle that shit and build it back up
yourself with new and diverse
Experiences because if you never try it you're never gonna know your favorite thing to do
Could very well be bungee jumping or skydiving
But if you never try it, you'll never know. There's no way
That you can experience the fullness of life
without diversity most of the time the things that we
hate
don't like
Disagree with are the things that we simply don't understand
period so
diversity
Understanding if we're going to come together
Right and and and tear down all the different things that divide us and separate us if we're gonna come together
Then we got to get to know each other. I'm a firm believer that if if we get to know each other
we're gonna find that and we're gonna get that we're gonna click that's what's gonna happen and
it's all about just
Understanding other people. The reason that a diversity is so important
The reason that we all need it in our lives is number one so we can come together
Understand each other better
Understand each other to the point to know that we all really are kind of looking for the same thing
So we can come together as a diverse community
To address diverse problems with diverse solutions. So that's one reason diversity is important
The other reason is because you will not experience the fullness of life unless you try new things
Unless you get to know about other things unless you learn about other things try new things
experience new people new places new
Conversations and you just might find out that
Those people the new places the new conversations the new things that you experience just might be
Your very favorite thing so is diversity important
Absolutely. One of the things I like to say is diversity is one of the best teachers and it will help us experience the
fullness of life and the things that I'm about
awareness
awareness of your box and
the parts that help you in the parts that don't and once we figure out the parts that don't help us and
We take responsibility for those things and stop
blaming
other things other people other groups other ideas take
responsibility for that
because until you can say I did this I
Live in this box and I'm allowing this box to be my experience
Until you can say I did this you can't you don't have the power to change it
You don't have the power to do anything about it. So first is awareness. Next is personal
responsibility and then once you take responsibility
You have to take action don't you you have to take action if you don't do anything
nothing's gonna happen if nothing changes nothing changes, right and
I'm also about about understanding each other getting to know each other
Appreciating the diversity of us coming together as a diverse community
On common ground with a common goal of just well first of all
just loving each other loving each other and coming up with diverse solutions to diverse problems and
breaking down
these
barriers
That we've all created
like sometimes I think about
The conflict that we have in the world and and the world that we've constructed and it just blows me away
You know
Borders and not just borders, but we're gonna build walls to keep people out. We made all this shit up
We made all of this up
We created all of these boundaries and you know what it kind of comes down to you because I'm better than you that's why
You can't come here because we're better than you. We're right you're wrong and
It's just so ridiculous
We're not better than anybody
So I'm about coming together
awareness responsibility action and then breaking down this
bullshit that we've created breaking down these barrier bull shit barriers, we created and coming together as
the human race
That's it
Please take what you need and leave the rest. Bye
You
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