Celebrating Our Similarities

• Reading Time: 2 minutes
  • 370 Words

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 I discovered people are alike in many more ways than they are different.

I was heavily influenced by Morgan Housel when he wrote, “The dead outnumber the living 14 to 1, and we ignore the accumulated experience of such a huge majority of mankind at our peril.”

In my early teenage years, I relocated to a more crowded environment, and in this large community, it seemed to me that people were convinced of how special they are—egotistical, indifferent, and insensitive to others. You see this in the levels of liquor and substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, crime, and the stagnation of adults. I strongly believe these individuals have willfully refused to study and learn about others. They’ve convinced themselves they know it all.

Worse, if they don’t know something, pointing it out only irritates them.

In such communities, where most believe themselves unique and special, you often find the most ordinary, wretched, and ignorant. They are ordinary because they follow what their friends or neighbors suggest; wretched because they lack the discipline to forge a new path, conforming instead and growing bitter; and ignorant because they repeat the same cowardly and selfish mistakes that shaped their upbringing.

Only when people begin to study humanity—the intricate, machine-like mind, the triumphs and failures of the past—do they become, not necessarily unique, but authentic, original, and daring. Only then do they appreciate the similarities between one another, not to lament over, but to celebrate strengths, alleviate weaknesses, and find a healthy balance between pleasure and purpose.

Cancelo Alvarez