One of the most peculiar sights I could ever imagine happened one afternoon on the street right by my house. Unfortunately, I was absent for its occurrence, but I heard in detail my mother and sister explain to me what they had seen. A Saint Bernard and a goat had been casually walking up our street together in harmonious companionship.
It feels as strange to type as it initially was to hear. Where were they from? Where were they going? These questions raced through my head as my mother and sister brokenly explained the story of it all as they were interrupted by laughter and confusion. As comedic and completely random as this situation was, I couldn’t help but dwell on it a little, and eventually, write about it. I began to think of the simplistic rarity of it all. The Saint Bernard and the goat were walking together. And sure, maybe it was a bewildering sight for my mother and sister to see, but did the two animals pay any mind or concern to their uncommon pairing? Probably not. They were just walking.
How many times in our social cliques and circles are we taken aback by ‘Saint Bernard and goat’ dynamics? Do we let differences become so clear and potent that we become uncomfortable? Do we often halt walking down the road together and look at the other, dissimilar creature and ask, ‘what am I doing here with you?’ Nobody is the same, but it is so easy to congregate ourselves into like-minded, mirror-room cliques that shelter us from differences and keep us stewing in a pool of nothing but our own self-composed world.
Having alike friends and groups is not by any means a bad thing, but the danger is hiding from a place of social acceptance, that differences must be valued and embraced. Most of my closest friends are completely unlike me, but that’s okay. Accepting difference opens the door to a life that is a beautiful arrangement of congruence on a human level, and avoids the surface levels of variance between personalities. Like an orchestra – a conglomeration of diverse tones and colors work together to shape gorgeous harmony. An orchestra of 30 identical clarinets would have nothing on that.
Today, differences and non-acceptance are at the root of injustice in cities, teen suicides, attacks on campuses and so much more. But what would it look like if we were to all pick up our feet again and walk along the road together, the unlikely pairs we may be.
