(Image free for use from Pix4free.)
I saw a really incredible little story on Facebook.
This story was posted by a group called Human Kindness. It is about a young English girl, Gillian, who was different. She had difficulty paying attention in class, she felt compelled to move even in times when people wanted her to be still. She was punished often, in school and at home. Not understanding, they tried to change her.
One day, as the story went, her mom was called to school for a consultation about the magnitude of this terrible problem, this difficult, ‘different’ young girl.
During the interview an old teacher arrives who knows the little girl. He asks all the adults, mother and colleagues, to follow him into an adjoining room from where she can still be seen. As he leaves, he tells Gillian that they will be back soon and turns on an old radio with music.
As the girl is alone in the room, she immediately gets up and begins to move up and down chasing the music in the air with her feet and her heart. The teacher smiles as the colleagues and the mother look at him between confusion and compassion, as is often done with the old. So he says:
"See? Gillian is not sick, Gillian is a dancer!"
The new insight made all the difference. They put her in a dance class, and she returned home, after, exultant, because all of the students there were like her, compelled to move and dance. The insight is ALL that changed, the openness to understanding, to appreciation. Understanding is a Democratic predilection. It doesn’t benefit the electoral chances of Republicans, so they’re happy to dispense with it, indeed to block and undermine it where possible. But it is critical to the loving world we want to live in, to create.
From the article:
In 1981, after a career as a dancer, opening her own dance academy and receiving international recognition for her art, Gillian Lynne became the choreographer of the musical "Cats."
It is the kind of story that brings tears to my eyes. That’s not just because she found her path to understanding and nurturance, but because it tells such a clear story of difference in society, and how society handles it/should handle it.
I think of the millions of people in our country who are ‘different,’ who differ in some way from some arbitrarily decided ‘norm.’
For these are our brothers and sisters and cousins and neighbors, who are under assault by our political enemies, and who – sadly – do not always receive enough understanding and nurturance even from us.
I am different, too, as, perhaps, are you. Long live difference, long live diversity. The fact is, we can never have enough of it, and we can never value it too highly.
Thanks for reading. And thank you, Gillian, and those who accepted her for who she was.
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