We are the same, yet in many ways we are different. Let me explain. I would argue that virtually everyone reading this shares very similar life experiences regardless of what language they speak or where they were born.
For a broader perspective, we can turn to biology. There are three stages every human or animal must go through. First, we must be born or hatched. Then, we must live for a certain period and then we die. If you boil life down to these three stages, our lives are all the same.
You can dive deeper into it for humans. Our genetic makeup is 99.9 percent similar to one another. We also all bleed the same blood regardless of our location or environmental factors.
Across the world, all of us are being impacted by the pandemic, albeit in significantly different ways.
Those reading this article most likely understand English. Between the two of us — the reader and the author — we share a linguistic system. When you go into the specifics of those who read this article, you can assume they have internet access, a prerequisite for reading editions of The Daily Free Press that are not printed.
It is also likely that many of you who are reading this article lean to the left of the political spectrum. At least for me, I like reading opinions that match my own, so I’ll assume much of my audience has similar ideologies.
I would say most of you had access to a TV to watch cartoons when you were growing up. For myself, I watched the classic Clifford the Big Red Dog, or at least that is the one I remember watching. I didn’t have that much access to a TV at home, so I watched most of my childhood cartoons at my cousin’s house.
It might be clear now that our lives are incredibly similar, in the grand scheme of things. Or, maybe I lost you two paragraphs ago and this could be one of our many differences.
We all have a virtually identical genetic makeup, with differences so miniscule it comes down to 0.1 percent.
Of course, where we are born and how we live will often be fundamentally different. If you grew up in Syria as opposed to the United States, your life experiences and basic understanding of the world may be drastically different.
Your experience would also have been altered based on how many parental figures were around when you were growing up. If you had a lot of grandparents, aunts, uncles and other family members, your life would turn out differently than if you grew up with no parental support.
Your external looks would also be different than almost everyone on the planet — unless you had an identical twin. And on that point, your life would be different if you grew up with siblings versus as an only child.
Yet, I would argue that even with all of these factors, we lead very similar lives.
You may be thinking, “Great, I just read several hundred words on why I am the same as anyone else. What’s the point?” I would say my argument is that regardless of our differences, we are all the same. We all are humans inhabiting and interacting with the same world.
Regardless of who you identify as, you should realize you are the same as everyone else.
Minute differences in external appearance or political ideology do not give you the right to judge, belittle or harm someone. Maybe I am too idealistic in hoping that what I write will make a difference, but I implore everyone to respect one another because we are all the same.
