Recognizing Differences

This past week I was introduced to a new professional association, The Association for Size Diversity and Health. Actually the introduction came from a past colleague and good friend who was visiting the east coast as they began their conference.

As we chatted, I was impressed with the principles of this organization and their mission to educate others on the importance of healthy perspectives around this topic. As she shared, it is often an unfortunate misunderstanding that facts are misconstrued regarding an individual’s varied size and proportion. Our media often exploits this, information is shared with a slant, and an educated perspective is compromised.

Instead, for any of us, fostering a healthy perspective for differences helps to pave the way towards clearer understanding. Author Scott Page of The Difference notes, “diverse perspectives and tools enable collections of people to find more and better solutions and contribute to overall productivity (Scott, p. 13)” . Appreciating differences opens doors to understanding and increases our collective wisdom!