How open minded are you?

We all like to say that we are open to everything, that we don't have any prejudice against other people, different cultures or other behaviours. 

I think it makes us feel better with ourselves, thinking that we accept and respect all differences. That we are able to put other people shoes and understand where they came from or what they are going through.

But it is a pure mistake.

We try to fool other people with such statements and we make ourselves fools for believing in what we say to the outside world.

We are only human - they say.

And it is true.

No one can be perfect or make no mistakes. But we can try our best. We can acknowledge that we are growing, evolving every day, to a better person or not so much. And that's ok.

We can just be what our circumstances allows us to be, sometimes, but we can also work to change those circumstances and be happy for trying even if we never get to where we believe we want to be.

This came to my mind after a talk with a close friend. We were talking about how people from our home town could change their opinions about the world if they had the chance to live closer with other culures/ societies.

The funny thing was, after finishing the talk with her, I change my opinion, completely. 

While thinking about myself and other people I know who have moved to bigger cities and to live around different cultures, I realised that it is not enough.

On my own example, I have opened my mind to some new ideas, but not so much to others. And I believe that that probably happens with everyone.

We tend to live in our own world and sometimes we simply don't want to open up to anything but what we know and have experienced. It may be lack of interest, laziness or even that we do not think about it. 

Good night!

I also became to realise that to be open to anything different, constantly, requires a lot of energy from us, we need to do some deep thinking about it and to put some effort not to jump into conclusions - we need to pay attention and be conscientious non stop.

Meditation may have a positive influence to get to this stage, as well as being in contact with nature, try to surround ourselves with positive energy and, the most important, we need to make peace with ourselves.

Have you ever thought about this? How do you embrace difference?