Golden Opportunity – Share Your Cultural Gifts

Everything in the Universe is collective energy including our thoughts and emotions about cultural diversity issues. Honoring  and understanding that the world’s multi-cultural diversity is really a true “blessing in disguise”, will create global success, like never seen before for any organization, society and nation that fully embraces this belief.

Understanding the key principles of cultural diversity and the need to nourish such environments in work and society are critical to achieving harmony in the world.

We are all born into a certain culture. Now imagine if this vast amount of multi-cultural diversity was really intended to be shared with one another without judging. Imagine the ability to be able to experience the full vibrancy, colour and depth of another culture without having to leave your country!  Canada is such a rich culturally diverse country people could spend an entire lifetime traveling from Province to Province and nourishing their souls with such diverse cultural knowledge, still waiting to be discovered.

From Native Indian to East Indian, Irish, German, Ukrainian, Muslim, Eygpytian, Portguese, Spanish, French, British, Italian, Korean, African, Chinese, Afghan, American people and many more, reside in our towns, cities and villages. We work daily with people from multiple cultures, yet how often have we taken the time to learn about one another. How often are we open enough to share our cultural depth with others?

How many times have we all wondered about a certain culture and their customs, perhaps you’ve seen something on television that has really intrigued you about a culture, the food, a traditional dance, a wedding ceremony or perhaps even a cultural holiday. You might have wondered, why does my stir fry not taste like the Chinese restaurant or why do some Indians wear turbans and others don’t, or why do Greeks break plates during their weddings. And then when a golden opportunity has presented itself for you to ask the perfect person the question you would love to discover, you backed down because you were too reserved to ask in case you “offended them”.

I would like to share a couple of personal experiences around the multi-cultural sensitivity issues we face today:

1) A friend of mine recently contacted me about an Indian performance group who were performing in Canada asking about Indian advertising vehicles I could point her to. She had been told by the marketing department that “they had to be careful to market to the correct Indian audience” – because the performers had come from a specific territory in India.
I responded that in this wonderful multi-cultural diverse country why would the organizers not want to share this beautiful performance with every cultural society rather than just with the Indian community?

2) Another example was a recent “Jehovah faith pamphlet” I had received at my home which featured an article on a school teacher who was stuck for cultural and religious knowledge until she had recently received a book on multiple faiths. She was absolutely ecstatic that she could now understand and share this knowledge with her pupils in class. You would think that the school systems would have a cultural knowledge bank somewhere that teachers could access these resources?

Illumination:
I would like to encourage you all to step outside of your comfort zones to explore the wonderful multi-cultural society we live in. Trust your instincts and heARTificial Intelligence that you might not be offending anyone, and go ahead ask your friends, associates, your neighbors or perhaps even fellow parents at your child’s school.  One simple question – “I would love to learn about your culture and/or faith, do you mind sharing?” And see what happens.

If they say yes, fantastic, you will discover some hidden gems and jewels of a culture that you probably would NOT have experienced, if you had not asked.   On the other hand, if they say no, please don’t be offended and become sensitive just look at the bright side only 1 person in perhaps a 1000 that might say no. You still have 999 others to ask!

A final thought, remember the world’s diversity of languages, traditions and cultures are a great treasure for all of us to enjoy while we live on this planet and when we’re all done we will shed our body suit and underneath we will find we are all the same!

Let Go.  Simply Trust Life.