I once sat in a room full of people that I hardly knew.
I related well to the ones who were quiet, who sat by themselves wondering if they
made the right decision to be there. They were shy, and I felt the pain of forcing themselves
to come to this foreign place. What if no one liked them?
What if their insecurities showed? I knew that feeling all too well.
I related to the others who created friends with the people around them instantly.
They were outgoing, willing to put themselves out there to be taken, and loved, and accepted.
I knew that feeling of going out of my way to create friendships,
because it is the force that drove the shyness out of me.
As I looked around the room, I picked out the ones who were fake.
I don't know why they felt so uncomfortable in their own skin, but they did.
And as much as they tried to hide it, it showed. Oh, how it showed.
That must sting, don't you think? To be so ashamed of who you are, that you lie
to yourself and the people around you about it. I hurt for those people.
Because most of them, probably aren't even half bad.
They just think that they are.
I related to their desire to just be accepted.
In this room full of people, groups started to form. Those with the same interests,
personalities, and desires gathered together.
There were some stragglers who were hoping that someone would reach
out and say, Hey, come join us.
Some of them were picked up,
and some just sat and waited...and waited.
I just stood on the outside and watched. I didn't want to choose just one group.
No, I would never want that. Then I'd miss out on all the other ones.
As I was making my way from group to group, an argument broke out.
I didn't even know what it was all about it happened so fast.
But groups were disagreeing. And yelling. And saying mean, and hurtful things.
They turned their backs to each other, and criticized theother groups
for the way they were doing things.
Didn't they know they're completely wrong? They would ask their new friends.
In one of the groups, was a quiet one. Everyone around wondered why this one was so shy.
Because I listened, the shy one told me their story.
The shy one had been tossed back and forth between homes and cultures since birth,
and had never been accepted anywhere. Not by their family who lived off of food stamps;
they were jealous that the quiet one was going to escape that life.
And not by the ones in the outside world either. After all, why would they accept someone
who just came from such low circumstances?
So, the quiet one stayed quiet. Never finding a place in the world. But who had so much to give.
I decided that I should go see what was going on in the group down the hall.
They were so loud, each one competing for a voice over the other.
I grabbed the loudest, and quietly said I wanted to hear their story.
The loudest had been in an abusive marriage for 10 years and was searching to find themselves.
The loudest had a broken rib, and a permanent memory of being told over and over
that they were worthless. The loudest was loud, because it was too uncomfortable to be left alone in thought.
Each group was different, yet they were all the same.
In some groups there were atheists who were ridiculed by believers.
What the believer didn't know is that they had been molested their whole life,
and couldn't believe that a God would allow that to happen to them.
There were some people who never had to work a day in their lives,
so they were inconsiderate of what others did and found it easy to judge.
Some of the people were in such economic crisis, that they contemplated taking their life.
The alcoholics that received eye rolls and no compassion had scars so deep
that they felt it was easier to remain in a state of blur, than to deal with their past.
They wanted to escape, and didn't know another way out.
But in this room, no one knew these things about each other.
Because no one took the time to listen.
These groups actually had a lot more in common than they each realized,
but they could never associate themselves with someone who thought differently.
We're all different. We all have different beliefs, ideas, insecurities, and goals.
But that doesn't make us better or worse than the person sitting across from us.
We only see a surface of a person's life as we interact with them throughout our days.
We pass judgments on these interactions, small or big, because it's the only
thing that we have to go off of; our time interacting with them in that moment.
What we never see, unless we take the time to understand, is why they are the way they are.
We live in a world full of black, white, yellow, brown and red people who believe in being
Muslim, Christian, Aethiest, and Jewish.
These people are married, single, gay, straight, divorced.
You don't have to agree with their lifestyle decisions.
But we can still all respect each other.
And our differences.
And come together as people for a greater good,
instead of attacking that which we don't understand.
We all have a story.
And we're all people.
Let's unite together.
