Live and let live, say I.

It an easy thing to say, but seems much harder in practice. For some reason when another presents an opposing viewpoint or is contrary to your personal desires, it sparks a desperate need in the human psyche to seek it out, destroy it, or assimilate it to one's own comfort zone. It often leads to discontent, strife, subterfuge, and sometimes outright warfare.

Talking heads speak on the value of diversity and the enrichment of divergent views, but in practice that is not so. Diversity is only valued when it fits into one's own comfortable little niche. Diversity is only valued if it's within your realm of control or understanding. Divergent views are shunted aside or squashed, so that one does not have to challenge one's own paradigm.

This is absolutely tragic.

What could you learn if you truly live and let live? How many lives could you enrich if, instead of seeking to control what is outside your realm of influence, you actually sat, listened, and learned? Knowledge is power, not control.

Destroying what is not yours does not give you any measure of control. All it does is cheapen your spiritual and intellectual experience. It removes you from enlightment with every accusation or covert action against another and their opposing view. It detracts from any growth that you could have attained by just listening and respecting another's view.

Live and let live. We are the embodiment of the Divine. Their essense resides in our very souls and is reflected in the shell. Each difference is a lesson that we can learn. Each divergent view is yet another aspect of the Divine. By shutting down what you do not control, understand, or agree with you become what you detest.

You become weak, feeble, and narrow minded. You lose the higher self in the pursuit of power and in your own arrogance. You lose out on the lessons that are held before you, in whatever form they may take. If you cannot allow an opposing view to flourish, what does that really say about you? Is your spirit so weak that you cannot stand up and be a shining example of what you are?

If your faith is challenged, that should harden your resolve. You should be able to stand up and know exactly what you are and defend it, without having to resort to name calling or degradation of another path. If your lifestyle is mocked, that should strengthen your position. Live in the best manner you can and seek to disprove perception by your mere existance.

Let the weak ones be those who cannot abide another being in "their" world. Let the truth of diversity be in yourself. There is no reason to be spiteful or cruel.

And if all you seek is power, then you will never, ever be powerful. The rule you have over any will be shallow, because you know.. deep down.. you're nothing without it. Power is in the ability to accept others and let them live their lives, without your having to prove you're "better" than they. If you're truly better, people will know. They will know because they see it, not because you destroyed all who stood differently.

True power lies in the confidence to let others exist without capitulation. True power lies in knowing who you are, inside. True faith resides within the heart, not in how many converts you manage to sway.

Live and let live, say I. The more lives I see and experience, different than my own, the better I feel I am as a person.