It has been a little more than a week since my older daughter has been home from college, and I am immensely impressed with how she handled her first year.  It certainly was challenging, not only in terms of her classes and learning to handle the pressures and changes of college life, but in talking with her, I have been really struck by the perspective she has gained from choosing to leave California and attend a school in the South, where she was very different.  Her insights have really stayed with me, especially as I am preparing for a trip outside of the United States, and finding myself a bit nervous.  It really got me thinking about how we take our sameness for granted, and while it’s comfortable, easily fitting in is not always the best for our personal development or for our understanding of and compassion for others.

At first it was fun to be different, she told me.  As soon as she told people where she was from, she instantly had a topic of conversation and was easily remembered.  She was exposed to different foods, customs, and ways of speaking, often finding humor in the contrasts.  But over time, the realization of deeper levels of differences emerged, from the lack of common experiences to differences in political views, and even interpretations of relationships, communications, and cultural norms.  It was often tiring to explain herself, she told me, and be on guard for ways in which she might misinterpret others or say something that others would find challenging, or be judged by a preconceived notion of what someone thought she would be like.  Being different became isolating she found, and even painful, at times.  She longed for people who intuitively understood her meanings, preferences, and accepted them.

“What a great lesson, though.” she told me, as she tried to imagine what it would be like to be a constant minority in the world.  She also recognized the privilege of being able to choose when and how she revealed her status as different.  Being blonde and blue eyed, she could easily blend in until she chose to tell people where she was born and what her religious upbringing had been.   Even the relatively small chasm between her and her school community had a big effect on her.  While she absolutely chose her school in large part to experience a different culture, what she didn’t expect was to experience the effects of being different on such a deep level, longing for opportunities of similarity and the comfort of sameness.  “I am so much more aware and sensitive,” she explains, “of everything I took for granted.”

So why am I nervous to travel abroad, I ask myself, and experience being different?  I love to expose myself to new people and places and have looked forward to this trip for a really long time.  Being different involves being vulnerable, it occurred to me.  I might need to ask for directions in a different language, trust a vendor to give me an accurate price, or, God forbid, need medical help.  I will be at the mercy of others to understand my needs, respect them, and take them seriously.  Being different involves continually fighting the preference for and the ease of sameness along with the prejudice and misperceptions of perceived “other”ness.

Decades of research support the notion of our preference for sameness.  We choose employees and partners who are most like us, we sit with those we look like, and we tend to hold in higher esteem people whose beliefs are most like our own.   Even in schools and communities of great diversity, we tend to congregate and separate ourselves into similar groups within them.  Research also shows we assume more in common with people we perceive as similar and project greater differences with those we assume to be different, regardless of actual measures of sameness or difference.  Perceived similarity has the effect of bonding and attracting people to one another, while perceived differences have the effect of alienating and engendering distrust.

It takes a lot of courage to be different, and that is one of the many reasons I am inspired by so many of the people I work with, who have endured great prejudice or stigma in their journey to grow and heal and connect with others.  And it is also one of the many reasons I am proud of my daughter, for her courage to be vulnerable and her strength in being who she is, even if it means having to explain it, defend it, or just feel alone with it.  I am grateful for the enlightened reminder she has given me to be more open to others, especially someone who might be new, unique, or different.  I am definitely more aware of how important it is to put myself in the place of being the different one every now and again, but also how important it is to have my people to come home to.

Welcome back, Sierra, you have been missed!