While working my day job last week I received an email asking for “Diveristy Champion” nominees. I immedately sought to nominate an individual who heads a group of Baby Boomers striving to bridge generational divdes. And, me being me, my nomination prose HAD to include a defintion of the terms.
Now the first 3 definitions of Champion all focus on fighting and defeating, which is not exactly the kind of terminology I wanted to use. So I settled on the forth definition “promoting a cause or ideal”. But it was the definition of Diversity that really got me thinking. There I saw the word “Variety” followed by a semi-colon and the kind of word I would make up, “Multiformity”.

As we used to say in grade school “you can’t say ain’t cuz it ain’t in the dictionary”. Multiformity cain’t possibly be a real word. But ’tis. The dictionary tells me it is a “variety of appearances in the same thing”. Which is good, but in the context of the nomination process I preferred to think of multiformity as the 21st century replacement for uniiformity. That is, we don’t all want to be perceived as just like all the others in our group, but rather our common experience is capable of creating a whole that is much greater than the sum of our very individual parts.

On the other hand in the context of my individual multiformity, I’ll stick with the dictionary definition. Because, while it may appear that my active pursuit of video productions in the coming year would not allow me to continue being an author or systems janitor, I assure you these are all just facets of my being.