Different

Jackson and Miley both were born in Tennessee. After their mother's death, Stewart family moved to Malibu, California.

In various episodes of Hannah Montana, the showmakers have shown how both Miley and Jackson were subjected to humiliation because of their dialect or way of living. Jackson often remembers his time when he moved to California. His classmates had made fun of him for wearing cowbot hat, boots, and blinging belt. They laughed at him for his dialect.

Those episodes stayed with me thinking how relatable and believable they have been. I have seen people making fun of other people who are different from them.

When I was in college, there was a classmate who belonged to a remote village of Maharashtra. He was intelligent but he was not a strong communicator. He had trouble speaking Hindi and English. His Marathi too had a strong regional dialect. A lot of students used to make fun of him for his way of speaking. Over the years he became quiet, he would rarely interact with anybody. He would spend most of his time at the library. Looking back, I feel that he was mistreated. I believe all people who made fun of him would have regretted their actions.

I faced something similar at one of my workplaces, not because of difference in region or dialect but because of my qualification. I, a healthcare professional was in a team full of IT professionals for development of a database for a pharmaceutical company. I was made fun because I did not know the IT terms, jargon, and jokes. I was questioned by my colleagues towards my selection to the team. While I explained them multiple times that I was to oversee the pharma aspects of the database, I never felt that my ideas, opinions, and thoughts were taken into the consideration. Despite being the right person for the job, I never felt respected or even accepted in the team.

What Miley and Jackson experienced at their school was an experience anybody can relate to, because at least once in the life, everyone feels that they do not belong to the place where they are. Everyone feels that they are not among the people whom they could trust. This feeling mainly comes from how others are treating us, rather than how we see the world.

These episodes on the show had been giving subtle messages about equality, equal treatment, and respect for individual. It told us that even if the person appears or acts different from us, we must act with kindness. We should try to understand their culture, rituals, and background. We should be empathetic towards any person who gets exposed to a new environment. It is an important lesson because it helps the other person to get comfortable. It gives them an opportunity to speak their mind. To me, respect for individual stands at higher level, because respecting others never makes us smaller, but it helps the other person a lot. If small and simple gestures make others' lives easier, then we should not think twice in doing so.

Diversity in thought is a blessing and I believe we should think about it in practice.