Monday, January 14, 2008

Common.

Definition - Shared; joint; belonging equally to; united.

The basis of the word community.

Community is who we are, how we’re supposed to be. It’s not about overcoming our differences; it’s about realizing that at our cores, we are all the same. Common. Not in the sense of average or less than superb, but as defined above – shared, united, belonging equally.

I chose the picture for this post purposefully. This man would be (is) certainly labeled common by society. I would call him common too. But for very different reasons. He is common with me. His name is Modesto, I worked with him last summer. He lives in a house with neighbors close by, he works hard, loves his family and does his best with what he has. Me too. I love how dirty his hands are. I wish mine were that dirty right now.

He may live in Mexico, myself in middle-America, and we may barely be able to communicate since we speak different languages, but Modesto and I are common.

I’m tired of people trying to segregate humanity. Our differences aren’t what are important. Our commonness is.

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