Difference

The Woolwich attack happened this week. An indisputable tragedy.

Events like these make Facebook an interesting place, I am always surprised at the varying levels of tolerance my "friends" have. Often I can be led to believe racism is a redundant concept. I mean... Why wouldn't it be? Surely we're there! Surely we're all so over the differences between us and our environments and our perspectives we've realised... Actually... We're all the same? No?

Difference.

I didn't grow up with a lot of difference. If I'm honest I grew up with little tolerance to difference. Fortunately, and quite hypocritically on a fews' part, I grew up with a hell of a lot of compassion and love as a principle way to be which seemed to balance out the intolerance on their part.

Then I went to university. The first person on my dance course I met had a "funny" name, brown skin, spoke three languages, was of a faith I had never even heard of and had lived all over the world. After I asked him to repeat his name three times (and still didn't understand it) we went on to become great friends. He would open my eyes and my world and I would be forever changed.

Though he wasn't alone, he was just the start. I went to study dance and then a career in the arts with a special interest in the socially excluded. Then education. It was all punctuated with travel. My life was full of difference and richer for it.

I live in a corner of the world where living remotely rurally means you don't live amongst much difference. We made the decision to give her green spaces, village halls, woodland walks, craft fairs and summer fetes on our doorstep. The positives far outweighed the negatives of being anywhere else within our repertoire but my reservation was always the regret she won't grow up around a lot of difference.

I remember when I was at primary school we had one black child in the whole school. I remember being fascinated that the palms of his hands were pink in contrast to the dark brown of the rest of his hands. I remember so clearly that fascination and shyness about my curiosity. Later on in secondary school I remember being really keenly interested in Religious Studies when we started to cover different religions. After I got over the horror of the fact some people don't celebrate Christmas, I was in awe of the colourful Hindu Gods.

That fascination, that curiosity and that awe made the world so magical to me. I want that for my daughter, for all my children. I understand she can't, no one can, view the whole world from the comfort and safety of our home but I want her to see enough for it to whet her appetite. I want her to feel that hunger for all the world's treasures; the colours, the people, the places, the foods, the perspectives.

I suppose I'll take lead from my experiences. You teach love as a principle and everything follows.