How Diversity Has Changed My Worldview

Successful academic and professional study requires more than to surround oneself with diversity, but instead to be engulfed in it. Perhaps the most effective way to understand a person’s diversity is to understand how the intersectionality of their identities has formed their current world view.
I grew up with divorced parents below the poverty line. My mom spent years at a time in jail, rehabilitation clinics, and group homes, while my father has battled alcoholism long before I was born, so my grandmother raised me. Arguably a subculture itself, poverty has significantly altered my world view. Another identity which has continued to alter my worldview is that of a queer man. When I first ‘came out,’ I was in 8th grade. I lived in what my mother calls “trailer park culture,” which is the culture formed through living in a run-down, rural neighborhood. The identity I held at home was incompatible with my queer identity, so I had to learn at an early age how to reconcile playing these two roles separately, which is something I still do today. The social expectations in the larger queer community require economic stature, while the social reality of my home background is a severe lack …show more content…
While I began to feel out of place in church as my sexual orientation became clear to me, the church instantly knew I was out of place when it became clear to them. Upon arriving, I remember people apologizing to my grandmother about the news. The sermon was about the sin of homosexuality. Feeling humiliated, I promised myself I would not go back. At 14, I began a two-year journey researching religions until I found the right path for me. At 16, I began practicing Buddhism, of which I have been a practitioner now for six years. Through my religious journey, my worldview has been influenced by many other practitioners of Buddhism – most notably, a Sinhalese Buddhist Monk from Sri Lanka and veteran of the Sri Lankan Civil