Human.

I share a lot with you, friend. I've got eyes, just like you, and a nose. I've got teeth that sit in almost a straight row, and I've got ears, too. We've got red blood that pumps through our veins, hair that hangs on our heads, and nails on our fingers and toes. I've got a heart that beats loudly, and a brain that allows me to write the words on this page.

So let me ask you something.
If we are all so similar, why do we focus so much on our differences? Shouldn't we celebrate our humanity?

We don't care so much about the color of our eyes, the shape of our noses, the straightness of our teeth, the width of our ears. We don't concentrate on the type of our blood, the color of our hair, or the length of our nails. My heart beats just as loudly as yours, and the brain that allows me to type these words, it allows you, in turn, to read them.

So we can see our similarities. But we don't appreciate them. We acknowledge the way we are all the same, but we fixate on how we are all different.

That man over there is black. The girl sitting next to you is in love with another girl. The man you wave to every morning on the way out of your neighborhood, he considers himself a woman. The family across the street is Jewish. Your boss, he was married for thirteen years and realized after all that time, he's actually gay. You could be any one of theses things-- or none of them at all.

This world is made up of people who are all the same. And yet, nobody would read the above paragraph and think to themselves, all those people have a nose, a set of eyes, a heart, a brain, a consciousness-- No, all anyone would think of is how different they all are. Nobody thinks about how everyone is human. All people everywhere, gay, straight, bisexual, transgendered, religious, non-religious, dark skinned, light skinned, and everything in between, everyone is human.

Humanity is universal. Humanity doesn't see race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender. Humanity is universal. Humanity is what links us all together. Diversity forces us to be proud, and yet, still prejudiced. But humanity, humanity gave birth to diversity. Humanity is all of our roots, before where we came from, before what we looked like, before which gender we were or weren't, before what gender we prefer, before everything, there was humanity. We don't think about it much, we take it for granted, this life we were given. We nit pick about how different we all are, discriminating against people who don't look like we do, people who don't love how we do, people who think differently than we do.

What we refuse to see, is those people we discriminate against, they do look like "we" do. Like I said, I share a lot with you, friend. We all share the same body, the same blueprint, the same overall layout, but we have different color schemes and proportions. A large green apple compared to a small red apple, is still an apple, is it not? We are all the same, yet we are all different versions of the same.

Diversity is universal.

We refuse to see that we do love the same way. We all have a heart that beats for something. We all have felt so strongly about another human being that we could cry from our happiness. We all strive to love deeply and be loved in return. And we all are capable of loving someone else. But we focus on who loves who. We don't focus on the goodness of love, and the happiness it creates. What should it matter? One human loves another human.

Love is universal.

We refuse to see that we do think the same way. We all have a brain between our ears, and although the thoughts are different, and the millions of minds on this Earth never think in tandem, the thought process is there. The ability to think and conclude things, is uniquely human.

Humanity is universal.

Does it resonate?