Tolerance : The Way to a Better Everything

Giving up is so easy. I nearly let myself get caught off-guard again. 

Well, I'm back here and I'm happy to be back. 

For the past 2 days, something has stuck in my mind and I thought to share it with you. 

Tolerance. 

This simple looking word is a big part of why the world is either in peace or at war. 

Tolerance. 

Breaking it down to bits, I'd love to show you how much of an impact Tolerance can make in our

day-to-day lives as people. 

You see, in my opinion, it all starts with the feeling of superiority that a person has over their

Neighbours,  friends or colleagues. This superiority could vary from Religious ideals  to Political

Ideologies to even tribal ideals (which happens to be the major cause of intolerance we face in

Nigeria 🇳🇬).

These cases of intolerance are so ingrained in us even if we do not realize it. 

It starts from preachers telling us how our religion stands tall amid others, they do this to the extent that they take jabs at other religions, smearing them in lies thereby twisting the minds of their people to the extent that we begin to have distrust or distaste about other religions. It is this mindset that leads to the distrust of other people that do not share our religious ideals.

Parents begin to dissuade their children from making friends from other religious backgrounds to the extent of fighting against inter-religious marriage because "it is unholy" or "it is not the will of God". 

In Nigeria particularly, people are basically taught to detest people from other tribes. There is always one myth or another that paints the next tribe or ethnic group in a bad light and before you know it, we have sets of kids growing up with false impressions of people they have never even met or interacted with. It gets so bad that kids are told which kids they can talk/play with simply based on either religious or tribal reasons.

This seed of distrust gradually grows into a huge mass of hatred and enmity all based on perception.

It is a combination of these falsehoods that evolve into the political intolerance. You see, in the Nigerian political playground, the people are always manipulated using this same religious and tribal hatred that all the electorates happen to be victims of. 

Tolerance in itself is the only way out of this mess. According to Oxford, it can be said to be “ the ability or willingness to tolerate the existence of opinions or behaviour that one dislikes or disagrees with.”

We all have to practice tolerance in all that we do. And I think a major addition to the tolerance theme is RESPECT, yes RESPECT. We would not hate the next person’s values if we had some iota of respect for said belief/values. 

CONCLUSION

My solution to the tolerance problem is simple.

1.  Know that the next person takes their tribe/religion/political affiliation as importantly or sacredly as you take yours. The basic GOLDEN RULE principle. 
2. Learn to get out of your head and understand other people’s beliefs, find out what makes them appreciate their beliefs or ideals as much as they do and maybe you would learn to appreciate it too BUT even if you don’t RESPECT it all the same.
3. Learn that you are as special to yourself as the next person is to himself/herself, hence you should learn to respect people for who they are. 

If you observed well, most of my suggestions revolve around learning. This is because I see life as a learning process and I also see that the majority of the populace are victims of this issue of intolerance, so the only way out of this to me, is a conscious unlearning of the old and learning of the new. 

So tell me….

What other things do you think we can do to rid ourselves of this problem of intolerance in your country or city?