Are we spending too much time thinking about what separates us rather than what unites us?

What unites us is greater than what divides us. It always has been. It always will be.

Yet it seems no matter how many times this idea is drilled into our heads, no matter how many times it is proven, we seem to turn a blind eye to it.

Let’s start off by reviewing the brief history of our human species. Homo sapiens, the first modern humans, evolved from their early hominid predecessors. Back at the very beginning they were a tiny tribe of 200 creatures, and they lived together in a small valley in Ethiopia. Fast forward to somewhere around 250,000 years later, to the present day. They developed and started to travel. This allowed them to discover new parts of the world, consequently aiding them in the process of spreading across the earth. This small group called homo sapiens has since grown into a huge, international family of 7 billion people. It is the concept of family that we have forgotten, and we continue to think increasingly different about it. But like all families, we tend to fight, argue, and sometimes we simply do not get along. That being said, we still remain one family. Through the word family I do not mean your close relatives who are bonded to you by blood, I mean that we are all a community, we are all united.

The source of the problem that prevents us from fully acknowledging what unites us is caused due to the following factor. In every single encounter that we as humans face, it is what is being discussed that is problematic , the ideas that our communities are prioritising. This is a problem that we are having to face as a community, globally. When it comes to interacting with one another, we tend to consider factors such as race, economic status, gender, sexuality, religion, political stance and many more. It is as if our ability to discuss people without verbally stating these factors or even thinking about them, has been lost.

Therefore this causes the thought of what separates us to dominate our thought processes. It comes down to the choices we make, and starts with us as individuals. How do we judge people? Don’t we all want to live in a world where we are judged by personality, who we really are and not what we look like and such other factors? Shouldn’t we have at least enough respect to reserve our judgement for them and to base it on their personality??

The final question that arises is how do we achieve this? How do we stop spending so much time thinking about what separates us rather than what unites us? I think the answer is simple. There is only one way and it goes back to a quote from Martin Luther King’s speech which was made on August 28, 1963, in response to the racism and discrimination prevalent then:

“I look to a day when people will not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

That’s the only way we should judge another individual. These problems occur when all this other nonsense in regards to race, gender etc. gets in the way, it is just designed to separate us, not to see our common humanity. We should get back to the idea of looking at people and not judging them on any of those aspects, but only on the content of character and if we start doing this, consequently we will be able to see more resemblance between each other. After all, we are all homo sapiens.

During a 1961 address to the Canadian Parliament, President John F. Kennedy once said, “Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder. What unites us is far greater than what divides us.”

We are all humans until race disconnected us, religion separated us, politics divided us and wealth classified us. United we stand, divided we fall. We may all have our differences, but we are all human, a family, a community. We all are united behind the common cause of freedom, justice, fairness, kindness and equality. This is what unites us, and we must always remember that.