“We have no reason to distrust our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors. If it has an abyss, it is ours. If dangers are there, we must try to love them. And if we would live with faith in the value of what is challenging, then what now appears to us as most alien will become our truest, most trustworthy friend…Perhaps every terror is, in its deepest essence, something that needs our recognition or help.”

Finding differences between groups based on a few examples we see online or on TV exaggerates the superficial differences between all us human beings. But we are not different.

There is no us and them.

There are challenges for some people which can be too much to handle. These people cannot help develop bias and attitude because of their experiences. Whether a black person unjustly questioned and searched on the streets, or the officer on the streets being disrespected for being a cop.

These challenges are important to address, but they should not develop into lines drawn in the sand, divisions between people or races. Assuming negative of one group is just as bad as assuming negative of the other.

We help create the environment that we live in.  Any true divisions between us are faint.  We must be vigilant in not generalizing, catastrophizing, or amplifying those small differences, as much as these differences seem to stand out.

There is no us and them.

Don’t become a victim of the environment.