Can you reconcile the world if you have not reconciled with yourself?

I spent this week with some of the brightest minds on the continent, my fellow Mandela Rhodes Scholars. It was a five day workshop in which we thoroughly got to engage with the issue of reconciliation on many levels. Needless to say that I returned with a bag full of new lessons and another bag full of information that reinforced knowledge I had already acquired. I realized that I had to share some of these lessons with the people I have access to. The purpose of this blog therefore, is to share with you something that was reinforced within me, something I had begun to realize and implement in my own life, and something that is key in the journey to reconcile humanity; this lesson is the importance of what was referred to as the ‘reconciliation of self’.

What is reconciliation of self? Based on the conversations we had, I was able to gather that reconciliation of self means taking a journey inwards, it means to ‘suspend’ everything you have come to know about the world around you and your role in it, in order to discover, accept and love who you truly are on the inside and others. Now, I know this does not sound like so much fun, but please indulge me.

Most times when we are asked to define ourselves, we often draw on social group categories like race, gender, religion, nationality, tribe and/or sexual orientation among others. One thing that all these categories have in common is that they are categories that automatically divide the world into many types of ‘us’ and ‘other’. So, if you are black, black people become the ‘us’ and ‘non black’ people become the ‘other’. And you can do this with each of the categories listed above. The grouping of an ‘us’ against, not together with the other, is tantamount to the focus on our differences rather than our similarities. There is nothing inherently wrong with examining our differences. However, it becomes problematic at the point where the focus on differences overshadows or leads to the neglect of things that bind us; our similarities and our humanity. Our skin colour, gender, sexuality, religion and/or nationality becomes like a book into which we continue to write new meaning, new reasons for our separation from each other, for the disconnection, and so apart we continue to drift.

This image sounds rather scary, but there is always light. We can change the course of life itself if we stop and ask ourselves who am I? Why am I these things? What stands to be gained and by whom if I remain these things? Is there another way of being? Why have I not been motivated to be that way? When you start to get a sense of the image that is emerging ask yourself why do I dislike or hate that person? Be honest with yourself. What are the lenses you are using to assess this person? Try and put yourself in that person’s shoes. That is, ‘suspend’ everything you think you know about this person and why you think you know these things and then really look at the world the way you would if you were that person. In other words, empathize with the other. If you do this exercise correctly, if you truly empathize with someone you dislike or hate for whatever reasons, when you compare this new experience, this new knowledge, with that which you would have suspended at the beginning of the exercise, you would realize it is never that simple. Someone is never a criminal just because they are black; no one is ever violent just because they are male. There is always something more to the story. At this point, you might have realized that if put in the same position as the other you might have acted similarly. You  would have recognized yourself or  some parts of yourself in the other. You would have seen that we are all capable of the same evil that has been inflicted on us. You would have seen what humanity really means and that all the external tools that we have created to divide us like race, religion, tribe, nationality, gender, sexuality etc. do not really count or rather should not really count.

This theory may sound a little bit out there to most of you, but it does not cost you anything to give it a shot. All you need is your honesty and some quality time in a quiet room in your mind. This is my biggest Mandela Rhodes lesson so far and it has changed my life forever.