The ‘Life Dividends’ of Equality and Excellence
Finding Reasons to Set ‘Differential Prejudices’ Aside
by Adam Abraham
November/December 2003
SACRAMENTO – My heart reaches out to all the people who lost their homes in the devastating fires of 2003 in Southern California, and to those who paid the ultimate price with their lives. With a move to the Sacramento area in September that now looks like the work of Providence, it is humbling to see how I was taken out of harms way, that I might experience life in another way.
While fires in California in late summer are certainly no surprise, it’s safe to say that no one thought that the area would sustain a conflagration of such magnitude. The area where I lived in San Diego was evacuated as the fires crept within one more “Santa Ana leap” of wiping out the entire neighborhood. Fortunately, for those that still call the area home, that leap never came.
In the midst of such monumental calamity, however, we often find heart. We often find courage. We often find ignited, illumined spirits, and generous, compassionate souls. That is when the politics of difference, encompassing race, religion, and even politics itself, actually melt away, and temporal issues give way to timeless ones.
When one’s neighborhood, home, or life is threatened, the politics of the rescuer isn’t important. The basest of racists – who reside in all corners of the culture spectrum – are unlikely to turn away rescuers who happen to be members of the hated group. Strident homophobes are unlikely to turn back a brigade that brings relief because some of the members may be gay. This indicates that our prejudices are not really engraved in stone, as some would have us believe. It is evident that when a more practical and immediate purpose will be served, said prejudices can actually be set aside. Once set aside, the challenge is determining how to put them away for good. It’s a dilemma that some people are still trying to figure out in Iraq and other parts of the Middle East.
Getting back to California; can you imagine what it would have been like if the rescuers checked each threatened citizen’s race, religious, political, or ideological position before deciding whether to spray the water, offer shelter or food, or administer other assistance? The devastation would have been far greater. Many more acres, lives and homes would have been lost. Indeed, the fires might even still be burning were it not for the merciful rains that eventually came.
This begs the question. What reasons do we need to give ourselves to put our own “differential prejudices” aside, decide what is important, and treat others – all “others” – the way we want to be treated? When will equal treatment be transformed from an ideal to a reality because it’s something that we are living each day? If we are treating each person that we encounter with equal regard and respect, then we take the lead in influencing – though not controlling – how they will treat us.
Just because we treat someone else the way we want to be treated doesn’t mean that they – or all people who “look” like them – will necessarily reciprocate. If we can acknowledge that from the beginning, we won’t indict an entire group when one member “lives down” to a behavioral standard that we wouldn’t show them. Avoid, defend, or otherwise deal with the substandard behavior, but remain true to your own.
Setting a high behavioral standard benefits the standard setter, first and always, whether the person who receives it reciprocates or not. Eventually, someone, indeed, many if not most people, will.
Exercising, being, and presenting our very best — day in, and day out — creates more opportunities for actually experiencing the best results than practicing “selective excellence” will ever do. Making excellence our full-time job will yield lifetime dividends.
The sun doesn’t turn itself off and on based on who it judges to be “bad” and “good.” By the same token, gravity doesn’t become less for some or more for others. In matters of excellence, these major forces of nature, that make the lives we live on earth even possible, should be our role models. Only through commitment and daily application sometimes in spite of the less than stellar responses of others, will our highest and best dreams be given what they need to become the “active” reality in our lives.
Adam Abraham is author of I Am My Body, NOT! and A Freed Man: An Emancipation Proclamation (Phaelos Books), and host and producer of An Equal America. Mr. Abraham can be reached via email at adam@phaelos.com, or through his web site, www.phaelos.com.
Copyright © 2003 Adam Abraham. All rights reserved.