Becoming Part of the Bigger Picture

Life is like a puzzle. When you buy a puzzle you generally look at the picture on the top of the box to see what the final project will look like. Then you open the box and dump the pieces out and it looks nothing like the picture.

Well we are all pieces in this puzzle called life and we need to stop living like a piece with no value. We must break out of our segregated comfort zones and join the bigger picture called life.
I believe we are still very segregated in many ways. I am not just speaking of a black/white type of segregation but of what segregation really is. Segregation is the separation of one group, race, institution, church or any other organization from another because of some type of difference of skin color, opinion, choice or reason.

We tend to pull away from what is different from what we are or what we believe or know to be true. If someone thinks differently or acts in a different way or wears different clothing or even eats different food than us we separate and draw closer to the ones who do what we do most often.
Here are a few ways in which we practice “accepted” segregation:

• Opinion – If someone doesn’t possess the same opinions that we do we cut them right off. How many people have you deleted from your Facebook page because they expressed a differing opinion on your status
• Religion – It’s practically an abomination to hang with or consider anyone that has a different expression of religion than you do
• Cultures – If someone has different behaviors and beliefs characteristic of a particular social, ethnic, or age group
• Relationship Status – Whether you’re single or married or even your sexual preference

We segregate in our communities, churches, and schools, to name a few, and congregate with what we feel comfortable with. The problem with all of this is that it leads to shallow thinking, limited intellectual experience, minimal life experiences and just not a well-rounded, all-inclusive life. If all you ever eat for dinner is fish or curried rice and only eat that with people who look like you and speak like you how then will you know what the rest of the world is about if you never experience anything different from your norm?

We want to believe that segregation is a simple white/black issue, but segregation is an attitude and a way of thinking. Segregation is how we sort ourselves out usually losing something in the sorting. By segregating things in life we miss the wonderful aspects of life that we need such as having your best friend be an Indian, Asian or Caucasian instead of you being black and your best friend is black and your church is all black and your school is mostly black and you live in a neighborhood with maybe one or two white families. If you are guilty of a segregated attitude all you know is your culture and unless you interact with another ethnic group you never get the best of what the world has to offer. Somehow you are slighted in your experience and your thinking and ultimately your life.

Integration has to be authentic. It’s simply a moral choice we make each day whether we’ll be integrated or be segregated. We make the choice everyday by the way we treat others who may talk, look, act or live differently than we do. Segregation is a heart issue and will be solved when we learn to treat others the way we would expect to be treated, fairly and not judgmental, looking at others through clear and not cloudy and muddied glasses, leaving our personal ideologies or parent and family thought perspectives, especially the wrong ones, out of the equation.

Stop looking at your piece of this life puzzle as if you’re a solo act. Instead, take another look at the lid and see where you fit in the whole picture – because without you, there is a missing piece to the bigger picture.
See you at the TOP!
Cherese Jackson