Tolerance

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I watched a movie called ‘That’s What I am’ last night.  The movie is set in California against the backdrop of the mid sixties and is a coming of age story that follows a 12 year old boy called Andy Nichol, a bright student who like most kids his age, will do anything to avoid conflict for fear of suffering overwhelming ridicule and punishment from his junior high school peers.

The story revolves around Andy, the school’s biggest outcast Stanley (Big G) and Mr Simon their favourite teacher.  An incident in school that results in the suspension of a student for brutally beating a fellow classmate has the vindictive father of the student targeting Mr Simon about a rumour about his sexuality, leaving Mr Simon and the school principle to deal with the difficult issues of conceding and bending to pressures based on unfounded and malicious rumours or staying true to their principles and upholding the truth.  And while this is happening Andy and Stanley (Big G) have been paired to work together on their school project which raises issues of peer pressure, social acceptance and believing in oneself.

For me, the movie also addresses a larger issue, the one of tolerance of every human being for what they are.  We cannot all be the same, look the same, think the same, live in the same way.  The beauty of the world is that we are all very different in our external appearance and thought forms, there are different cultures and belief systems among all the people who live in this world.  But that does not mean that any one culture or belief system is right and that the others are wrong.  The differences are all just individuations of the same Source – Love – to experience different aspects of creation.

I believe tolerance is about accepting the differences in each individual being and letting the other being live their truth.  Just because you have a certain belief system and follow one path, it does not mean that someone who has another belief system and follows another path is wrong.  There is no right or wrong path or belief system – all roads lead to the same place – back to The Source, to Love.   Just think of going from your home to the supermarket.  There will be different routes that take you to the supermarket.  Just because you take route 1 and another person takes route 2, it does not make route 2 wrong – it’s just another way to get to the same place.

This could be another way of integrating Love into our daily life – by just respecting and accepting another human being for what they are and not judging them by their culture or belief systems.

In Love and Light