It has been troubling me, recently that there is so much divisiveness in the world. We fight over differences in religious beliefs and political ideologies; we hate and fear each other because of differences in race, class, sexual orientation, and culture; we isolate ourselves into pockets of perceived sameness.
STOP IT!
Now, I'm not a world traveler. I have only ever been outside of the US once (and that was to Tijuana, so that doesn't even really count). But what I see in people is that we are all SOOOOOO much the same. We want to live in a safe environment, we want to be connected to our communities (however that may be defined), we want our children to live happy and productive lives, we want to eat, sleep and go about our day to day lives with a sense of health and security and meaning. Some want to have the ability (freedom) to believe and worship in our own way, and the others want to be able to not believe and not worship in peace. We don't want to live in fear.
We all need to eat. We all need to shit. We are not that all that different.
Today, a colleague and friend of mine pointed me to a short video that brilliantly illustrates this very fact. It is from the perspective of women, but it is clear that it can be applied across the genders. Please watch it and see what you think. I personally think that so many of our world's problems could be solved if we could all just get a handle on how ALIKE we all are. Maybe my being born in the summer of love (1967) gives me a propensity towards hippyness and thinking of the like.
So sue me.
There are people somewhere (everywhere) all over the world who love their children unconditionally, who desire to provide a good, safe, healthy life for their families, who enjoy dancing and eating, who love having a warm and comfortable place to sleep at night, who enjoy shopping for fresh vegetables at a market, who can't wait to have a few moments to read something of interest, who cry when a loved one passes, and who want to make the world a better place. And those people look, sound and live very differently than I do. They eat different food and dress differently. But really, they are the same as I.
They are just like you, too.
I am proud of the woman you have become. I have always wanted to know what my life meant. Why am I here? You and Jamie are making this world a better place. One child at a time, one email at a time, one thought at a time. My legacy to this world is that I gave them someone who wants to see world peace and has the ability to perhaps make a difference.
Posted by: mom | April 25, 2007 at 11:35 AM