Different, Not Less

I've noted this at times, over the years.  When you are an introvert, you constantly get people that give you advice on how you can be more social and speak up, more.  I'm always over here wondering.. why isn't the discussion about how someone else can maybe be less public and socially pressuring?  However, especially as our society becomes more and more polarizing, we have more and more categories where this kind of prideful assumptions about others are seen.

It doesn't mean that you are bad, if you are different.  It isn't that being an extrovert is better than being an introvert.  We don't need to give people advice on how they can stifle their emotions to please those less reserved or to make an emotionally reserved person have to display them to please someone that isn't so reserved.  We don't need to make people be more intellectual, religious, diverse, or any other quality.  

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that individual preferences are not important.  I definitely have my own personal style and preference.  Others can and will have a different preference than I do.  Our goal should not be to change people at all but to recognize that just because someone or ourselves are different, it does not mean that they are less or that their way is less valid.  It is valid for them, just as it is valid for us.  Nor is it or should it be important to make someone be different in order to "work" with us.  I believe we should be diverse enough of a society that we are able to recognize the differences of others an interact with them in a way that meets their needs, even as we retain our ability be live our lives our ways.  If there are needs that cannot be met by those differences, the problem is not the inability to meet those needs but the expectation that we have that they must do so.  If someone cannot meet those needs, it is INFORMATION that should guide us in the selection of what level of connection we have with them and to guide us in our search of those who will.

So, what I would like you go understand from this post is simply this.  People are different, and that is ok.  They are not less, and you are not either.  We are just all humans, trying our best to make our journey more happy.