The differences that make us the same

The race for globalization... for equality and plainness.

Nowhere else did I notice the desire to put everyone in the same bucket as I did in USA. Not even during communism. Throughout school, kids who had talent were promoted and sent to represent the class, then the school in math national contests (or what ever they excelled in); they were rewarded and the teachers often offered to devote special additional time to train them.

Not in US. Here everyone has to pretty much go at the same pace. Otherwise, it smells like money to be made and, ups! There’s a lawsuit!

The US shocker is the contradiction. People want to be acknowledged as different individuals, yet they expect to be equal and treated the same everywhere, all the time, no matter what. In front of the law everyone is the same. Yet lawsuits are the main reason accountable for giving more rights to one party or another – which leads to the contradiction I was talking about. After all, nobody minds being treated different if it’s in their favor.

Main question is: how can we be the same when we clearly are all different?

If we weren’t we would all be one entity.  And, in a way, we are; it’s called “the human race”. But we are also individuals. Throughout our lives we share varied experiences in diverse settings, influenced by various life events, people, groups and cultures which shape our behaviors, morals, attitudes and reactions to a given situation. And that’s what sets us apart.

And then there are the genes. As much as you want to think everyone is the same, truth is some people are “born” smarter than other. To balance that, I guess, usually stupid people have more luck. Otherwise I don’t see how they would live to be 30 and quite frankly I still hear people say that “the world is full of idiots”. Then again, this is a matter of perception, since I’m pretty sure the stupid people rarely think of themselves as stupid; not too mention that we all have had our moments of stupidity. So yes, “it’s all relative”.  Which only makes judging our differences or similarities even harder.

We are who we choose to be; and we are just as like others or “different” that others as we are taught and teach ourselves to be.

So what if you are different? Who names the difference?

Those who say you are different, are different too. They are different then you.

Being different is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, if you learn to distinguish what makes you different you can become even better because you already know about the similarities. And in every difference there are so many similarities!