The first thing that comes to my mind when I hear the word foxtrot is the comic strip by Bill Amend that I remember from years ago when I was growing up.   The funny pages are one of the things I miss the most from the days of print newspapers.  The foxtrot is also a dance.   Just click here if you would like a video lesson.  As words go, foxtrot seems to me a much easier word to blog about than difference.

I can’t say that I have been experiencing any sort of bliss lately.   Not that things are going terribly badly.  But nothing is going really well and I seem to just slog from day to day,  making it through one day at a time and trying not to worry too much about tomorrow.    I know of course that things could be so, So, SO much worse for me and my family,  so I try to count my blessings each day and not stress over things that are not as I would have them be.   The thing about bliss, it seems to me, is that it is something you can experience,  if you leave yourself open to the serendipity of the universe.  But it’s not something you can actively plan for or make happen.

Differences,  it seems to me, are what can divide us.   Unless we truly value diversity and celebrate the differences between us,  without letting them come between us.   It sometimes seems to me that we humans assume a great deal about other people.   Most of the time I don’t think this is malicious,  near so much as naive.    We assume that people we know and value look at the world in similar ways to us,  take similar approaches to moral questions or approach their lives in the similar ways to how we approach ours.   And it’s always very jarring when we discover it simply is not true.    In my heart I know that celebrating our diversity is the path to greater human understanding.   Even though in my head I know that sometimes this is really hard.