Make a Friend that Doesn’t Look Like You

For Bruce Lee’s 80th birthday celebration, one of my favourite basketball players, Kareem Abdul Jabbar recorded a message with a shirt that caught my eye. The shirt was a photo of him and Bruce Lee and said: Make a friend that doesn’t look like you. He expands on his relationship with Bruce and the meaning behind the shirt:

We had an unlikely friendship — a 7’2” basketball player and a 5’8” martial artist — but we had a shared interest in music, the arts, philosophy, and improving the lives of people who looked like us.

I’m often asked what the average person can do to make the world better and I say, “Make a a friend that doesn’t look like you.” Motivating people to recognize there’s a problem starts with creating empathy for others.

It resonated.