I recently attended the movie “The Shape of Water.” It is story set in the Cold War era of the 1960’s at a top-secret government laboratory in Baltimore, MD where a mute cleaning lady falls in love with an amphibian/human creature of the Amazon River captured by the USA but coveted by the Soviet Union.

This flick could easily have been titled “The Shape of Inclusion” as the characters struggle to recognize and embrace the differences of each other.

Elisa, raised as an orphan and mute for her entire life navigates a workplace, community and world that does not welcome her disability. Apart from the half man/half beast called the “Asset”, Giles, her closeted gay neighbor and Zelda, her African-American co-worker, they are the only ones who truly value the unique differences of Elisa.

Giles, Elisa’s neighbor struggles with an addiction that cost him his job and his sexuality that is so out of the step in a “Ozzie and Harriet” world. He is physically attracted to the male owner of a pie shop in the neighborhood and regularly orders key lime pie during each visit just to strike up a conversation with the proprietor.

He also witnesses the Jim Crow segregation of Baltimore, MD when the lover of his dreams who eventually spurns his advances, berates an African American couple for trying to place an order as sit-down customers.

This narrative gives you a front row seat of the distrust between two world super powers as they vie for the “Asset.” The USA wants to kill off the “Asset” while the Soviets, led by a scientist spy planted on the technical staff and Elisa want to preserve the “Asset” albeit for different reasons.

This tale of woe has a happy ending as Elisa, Giles, Zelda and the Russian scientist kidnap the Amazonian creature and hide him in Elisa’s apartment where a bathroom tub becomes his home away from home.

The movie ends at a pier where Elisa tries to introduce her lover back into his normal habitat. A shootout ensues with federal authorities as they gun down both the “Asset” and Elisa before they can enter the water. The Asset uses his supernatural powers to heal himself and Elisa and kills his chief tormentor, Colonel Richardson. Once justice has been served, he grabs Elisa as they plunge into the dark and murky sea of a Baltimore, MD harbor never to be heard from again.

This movie reminds us that we are not different from each other but we are different like each other. Whether we are friend or foe, able bodied or disabled, straight or gay, White or Black, we all long for the same things that make us human despite our differences.

We are all on the same highway we are just traveling in different lanes. Some are going faster than others. Some are forging new lanes of traffic and others are waiting for their own special right of ways like Elisa who never speaks but hears things most of us take for granted.

She teaches us the shape of inclusion. If only we would recognize it.