When You're Just... Born "Different"

Growing up with both a physical deformity and learning disability added a new level of awkwardness to the whole equation of life experience.

To be ridiculed, yelled at, to have to dodge rocks or fists, for no reason other than something that makes you a little different, just sucks to endure. 

Kids can be pretty mean. 

But, not all kids.  And, honestly, where do the mean ones learn such things?

The bright side of going through it, is the amount of empathy it comes with for others who suffer. 

And a deeper level of understanding that just can’t be taught in any schools.  Ironically, it costs more to learn these things than the highest available levels of education, for who can put a price on what it means to deny someone of the human right to be treated with kindness, respect, and dignity?

Really, we’re all

 just 

people.  

No matter where we come from, the language(s) we speak, whom we love, what we wear, what we eat, job title, how much money we have…

None of that really matters. Before kids learn to be mean, they’re generally not mean.  They’re not wild jungle beasts sizing up a meal… they’re small people with feelings and minds and hearts.  And at the core, all they want is to love and be loved.

Sure it’s tough in these days to just earn a living and keep the house relatively clean, much less to remain patient and as an angelic parent 24/7, but it’s SOOO important. 

There’s no such thing as perfection. Truly.

No one is perfectly symmetrical, and everyone has multiple things that make them unusual.

This is beautiful

Why is it that snowflakes can be stared at in wonder by just about everyone, and admired for how great it is that no two amongst all those gazillions are alike?

It’s never too late to start to look outward at the world a little differently. 

This world is what you make of it. 

To acknowledge, embrace and celebrate our differences.  To learn to love from the earliest of childhood all the funny little things that make us different, is the key to more kindness, more love, more peace… for everyone, everywhere.