Sitting at my desk I could hear children playing outside.
Kids from different nationalities, different countries, with different
languages, all running, laughing and playing together. There was the occasional
shriek, howl or wail of a child, who had played himself to the point of
exhaustion, but even that would make me smile.
It amazes me how different we are. We are so culturally separated, the way we think, absorb and process information is vastly different. The same image, the same situation makes us feel different things and draw different conclusions.
I’ve seen educated men and women in Africa, capable of speaking eight languages, struggle to put together a simple puzzle. I’ve seen educated men and women in the U.S. who could breeze through systematic theology, humiliated in language school.
The language we speak, the culture we live in, the experiences we’ve had all impact the way we view the world. Which means we all view it differently.
But the laughter of a child produces the same response in all of us.
It amazes me how alike we are. A child who wants “his” toy, young boys wrestling in the dirt, grass or sand, a teenage girl’s insecurity, a young couples obliviousness to the world around them, a mother chastising her son for running into the street, a father consoling his daughter who has fallen, a husband holding his wife’s purse as she haggles over prices, an old couple’s playful banter… I have been so many places and these images are as consistent as the sunrise.
People seem to think that if we focus on our similarities and not our differences we’ll begin to get along, that we need to find common ground. I don’t really think that’s true.
I think we need to embrace our differences. Learn from them. Understand them. Learn to understand that we may never really understand them. Only then can we appreciate the complexity of the issues between us.
We are not the same, you and I. That will make our relationship more difficult and it will make it sweeter.
It amazes me how different we are. We are so culturally separated, the way we think, absorb and process information is vastly different. The same image, the same situation makes us feel different things and draw different conclusions.
I’ve seen educated men and women in Africa, capable of speaking eight languages, struggle to put together a simple puzzle. I’ve seen educated men and women in the U.S. who could breeze through systematic theology, humiliated in language school.
The language we speak, the culture we live in, the experiences we’ve had all impact the way we view the world. Which means we all view it differently.
But the laughter of a child produces the same response in all of us.
It amazes me how alike we are. A child who wants “his” toy, young boys wrestling in the dirt, grass or sand, a teenage girl’s insecurity, a young couples obliviousness to the world around them, a mother chastising her son for running into the street, a father consoling his daughter who has fallen, a husband holding his wife’s purse as she haggles over prices, an old couple’s playful banter… I have been so many places and these images are as consistent as the sunrise.
People seem to think that if we focus on our similarities and not our differences we’ll begin to get along, that we need to find common ground. I don’t really think that’s true.
I think we need to embrace our differences. Learn from them. Understand them. Learn to understand that we may never really understand them. Only then can we appreciate the complexity of the issues between us.
We are not the same, you and I. That will make our relationship more difficult and it will make it sweeter.
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