We Are All Just the Same

Just back from a big junket to China for the first time in my life.

The more I travel this globe, the more I realize we are all the same, just dealing with the trials and tribulations of life with different strategies.

There is too much made of the political discourse, too much focus on our differences, not enough on our similarities.

I had the same remark fifteen plus years ago now when I did some extended work in Oman in the middle east.  Everyone figuring out how to make a living, how to navigate each day.

Different foods, different cultures, different fashions……but all the same challenges.

China surprised me.  I think the overreaching and constant messaging in western media about the oppressiveness of the regime made me believe I would feel oppression in the air.  

But it was the exact opposite.

The hustle and bustle of every airport, train station, and thorofare. Scooters and bikes buzzing everywhere, mixed in with the new car smell almost everywhere. 

Roads that didn’t give me a headache from the potholes were a change of pace from back home!

Walking the Houtongs, smelling the food, seeing the people in their day to day.  Everyone just going about their business, being human.

Walking the Great Wall, something I never in a million years thought I would ever do.  That was something special. But still taken by the “touristic” sensation of it all.  People everywhere, not many foreigners, just regular citizens being curious about something they themselves had never seen as well.

Teaching with live simultaneous translation, if you’ve never done it before, is a real exploration in patience.  Someone told me to forget the jokes, and they were right.  Jokes don’t work so well in translation mode.

But the patience in the listener was cool to watch.  People just as attentive having to listen once to something foreign, and listen twice to understand. But they listened, learned, and asked questions just the same.

Is there background noise, most certainly. Is there much I don’t understand, for sure.  I probably received a sanitized version curated for the foreigner. But I couldn’t help watching people simply go about their business each day and they did the same things we do.

They made the best of difficult situations, managed the turbulence of life, ate on the run, laughed, stared at their phones, moved quickly from one place to the next.

Kids are kids, they scream, and they cry, and they laugh and they play.  They are just kids.

We are all just the same, and the more we focus on that, the better off we will all be on this big blue planet.