Dear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,

 

Your life changed our world.  Forty-nine years after your death, we still honor you and teach our children about respecting differences in others.  But it’s still not right.

 

We are all different, but some differences remain much more socially acceptable than others.  We still keep some people at a distance.  They can be different as long as their lives don’t intersect with ours.  Unspoken segregation.  In actuality, our respect for differences sometimes looks more like pity.  It’s riddled with judgement.

 

We are such fascinating contradictions.  As parents, we teach our children to love those who are different, but we don’t want our own children to be different.  We say we want them to be happy when really, we beg for them to be “normal.”  The minutia of daily life causes us to forget that “normal” is a superficial social construct.  

 

When our children do not follow society’s list of rules and regulations, we are petrified.  What if they aren’t accepted?  What if life is hard for them?  Our fear is a natural reaction, but it stifles their ability to be their authentic selves.

 

We adults are at the core of the problem.  How can we really respect differences in others when we cannot accept them within ourselves?  Not only do we want our children to be “normal,” we want ourselves to be “normal.”  We go to great lengths to be like everyone else.  We think “they" have it all together.  The interesting thing I have found in working so closely with people is that we are all trying to match up to the external view we see of others.  Internally, we are all doing the same thing.  In other words, we are striving for something that doesn’t really exist.  When we are trying so hard to be like others, are we really honoring differences?

 

It is my hope that we can all continue to learn from your example…to unabashedly be our authentic selves.  If we all did this, we would not need to judge others to make ourselves feel  valuable.  A true honoring of diversity would certainly be cause for celebration.

 

Thank you for being different.  Your life made such a difference.

 

Tina Harlow