Accepting the other
by Avi Alog
A lot of times in our life we bump into this term, accepting the other, most of us agree with what we see in the news, in movies, in articles, most of us support at equality, but do we really understand the meaning of it and taking it to our personal life? Not always.
First of all..what is the "other"? Who said that there is other? The Norma? The Society? Are people that defining other people in some definitions are normal?
When we think about the other people, who do we think about?
People from the African countries, gays, lesbians, trance genders, people with overweight problems, poor people, atheists, people with other religions than ours and even rich people, and the list can go on depend who is different in our eyes.
I have a question, is one of the examples I gave doesn't talk about people? Like all of us? So why the society and\or us defining them as "others" or different?
Who has the right to decide who's different and who's not?
Is the man that came from Africa made from different materials? Is the gay person born in a different way than we did? Are people with other religions has no human abilities like we have?
For a lot of years, we divided people according to tables, subjects
A thing that separated us and made us as human filters.
Let's take some examples:
Not too long ago, the women were without status, almost as an accessory for men's need.
Seeing a woman bringing money home did not exist, the woman had no voice to be heard, she was almost nothing, not a human being.
Today in our modern world, in some countries women are still without status, and in the "developed" countries things have changed but still they can feel discrimination in their workplace, in divorce processes, in religion and much more.
People that came from the countries of Africa like Nigeria and Ethiopia got a cruel "welcome" from the white people for no reason.
For a lot of years they suffered from racism, slavery and murder with no reason, if it wasn’t for Martin Luther King Jr. maybe that same racism would still exist.
Even today in our "modern" world racism exist, there is discrimination with people that are not white skin, even though it's not like it used to be, it is still happening, still people are discriminated with no reason, just because of their skin color.
People that were born gays, lesbians, trance genders or any other name that the society gave them, are suffering for a long period in their life.
If it's the humiliation in high school, in the society, in the daily life, if it’s the difficult to tell all the people that are close to you, that you are "different".
A guy that decided to dress or act like he feels like, need to go on a daily basis of testing eyes that cross next to him, disparaging eyes, and why? Because he is gay!
People that the religion won't except them, that calls them a problem, or sickness, people that were born as Jewish, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists or any other religions, discriminated just because they are attracted to the same gender of them.
People that some of their own families didn't accept them because they were different.
People who born to a poor family or the ones that became poor.
The ones that we see in the streets every day and we suspect them if they are really poor or just drug addicts.
Without even thinking we define them, we don’t realize what we see.
A person that sleeps in the street and asking for something is not doing it with a lot of joy, he doesn't have any choice.
It's not so nice to go from car to car and ask for money or food, and sometimes we throw them few coins and keep on with our life without really understand what we see and discriminating those people in our head and look at them like they were worthless.
People with eating problems, or health problems, that because of them they get fat or thin.
We allow ourselves to laugh at them, to criticize their look, or say how poor they are because of their weight, without even thinking that those people are human beings like us, with feelings, people that know and feel when we laughing about them or feel sorry for them, people that would love to hear words that will make them stronger, good words, that they would be treated as normal people.
Some of those people don’t even see themselves as with eating problems, that feel good with their look, but we, of course, don’t believe it, it doesn’t make sense.
Atheists, people who decide that they have no religion, because of their reasons, they have their faiths, they choose that, but for us it seems so different, a lot of people even say it's bad, how come a person can be without the religion he was born with? How can a person say he doesn't believe in god? How many families were destroyed because of the religion? Because the child decided that he doesn't believe in the same religion that his parents believe.
So many examples we see in our daily life, situations that we are not really aware of, are happening around us every day, but we refuse to look at it as it is.
Do we really accept the "other" between us? Do we realize that the "other" is not just the look, that it can be an opinion?
Do we understand that by judging other people, judging their opinions, their look, we actually not accepting the other? As long as we tell ourselves that only we are right, we actually canceling all the difference in the world, we seal ourselves, our opinions.
Instead of hearing and accepting that every person has his own opinion and his own looking at the world, we cover our ears and eyes the best we can and keep telling ourselves that our way is the truth.
As long as we will keep doing that we won't accept the other, because we might think that we are normal, but to other people maybe we are not.
Unfortunately, the society taught us that we need to judge, that we need to be human filters, that we need to divide to subjects, to types, but as soon as we realize that the society is doing it, we will understand that we can stop it because we are part of this society.
We must understand that every living creature has the right to live a happy life in this world, live by what feels right for him to live, we should not judge people's opinion even if we don't agree with them.
We should not judge the look of people because who gave us the right to say who's beautiful and who's not?
We should not decide of our children what's good for them and what's not; their opinion and beliefs might be different than ours, but they are still part of us, they are human beings with the ability to decide what's good and bad for them.
We should not treat other human beings different if their skin color is different or their sexual orientation is different.
We are all human, we all came in the same way and we all going to leave in the same way.
We must not forget that we live with more human beings, which they all have feelings, thought, love, family, and friends.
we are all the same so there is no reason for us to behave or act differently to each other.
We all deserve to live in the best way, we all deserve the best treatment just because we are alike, just because we are human, because we made from the same material, we live in the same world and we all have a part of it.
It's time that we will accept everyone, not just the other, it's time to stop defining everyone as type, color or size, the only definition we should define is that we are all human beings and include ourselves in it.
When we talk about equality we talk about understanding and accepting one another, let's start appreciate and accepting instead of cataloging or classifying.
We are all human beings so let's act like it!!