I believe in the power of inclusion. As someone who does not fit the everyday mold, I have known what it is like to be excluded from activities, social circles and sometimes even job opportunities.
Though I am proud to be who I am, a bisexual Wiccan, it is not exactly the easiest life to live. Many people do not accept me because I am not of their faith or they don’t agree with who I have fallen in love with. Then there are others who do not accept me because of the generally random abnormal decisions I make.
When I was younger I lost a lot of friends because I was different, because I was strange. As I got older I lost friends because I came out of the closet, and the way I was living was deemed as “not right.” There are many people now who avoid me because I am on a different religious journey than they are.
One of the basic beliefs of my religion besides “Harm None” is that we try not to judge people and include everyone in our day to day lives no matter who they are or what they believe because we are all on different paths that will ultimately lead us to the same end. I believe that if I exclude someone it will come back to me three-fold.
I believe that people should be accepted based only on the practice of exclusive inclusiveness – everyone gets in. People could make so many more friends and have their lives opened up so much more if they just decided to stop excluding people who were a little bit different.
Because of my practice of inclusiveness, I have been introduced to a wide variety of random oddities including a fencing class, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, a local vampire club, a multicultural drum circle, Dungeons and Dragons, a Hindi meditation temple that I like to frequent, and many, many diverse friendships.
By talking to the quite boy in the corner, asking people why they believe in and why, doing things I’ve never tried before, and most of all not excluding the people around me, my life has become so much more interesting. I find myself not knowing what I am going to do from day to day because I don’t know who I am going to meet and what new thing they will introduce me to.