Can't We All Just Get Along?

*****Warning this Post is heavy in cumbaya, if you have an aversion to cumbaya, perhaps you shouldn't read this post****

As humans we live by labeling things, good, bad, dangerous, delicious, exciting, disgusting. And by extenuation we label everyone She's tall, fat, brown hair, Democrat, home wrecker, a good friend. He's short, conservative, athletic, passionate, plays the field. Some labels are hard not to use, because of course as we are human beings we categorize everything we come across as to ensure our long term survival. However it seems to me that people are relying on assigning labels to people, places, politics, situations more and more. What's worse making sure they are keeping like with like and not venturing past a very restrictive comfort zone.  Now perhaps this is the way the world has always been and I'm just now taking the rose colored glasses off. But I choose not to believe that.

For the past year I have had the pleasure of working with an amazing person. Married, Christian, conservative, went to seminary school instead of college. Me, single (living in sin), agnostic, liberal went to a very liberal liberal arts school.  On the surface it seems we had nothing in common and would butt heads a lot. But then we dared to do something crazy. Get to know one another. And he loves 311 even more than I do! We both enjoyed singing corny songs in the store. And above all else we both share a core belief that love is the ultimate guide to life. And while we steered clear of topics that we both knew that we didn't see eye to eye on we still admired each other and appreciated where the other person was coming form. He proved to be the best ally I had in the store this past year.

I do believe that our world as the advances in communication is  bringing us together, it is also tearing us apart. We now know in a nanosecond what took us days, sometimes months to find out. Where it took time for us to process and then act accordingly is taking minutes, hours. As a cause of this we label quicker and with much more haste.  I also believe, especially in the United States where we are a bicameral democracy, we have been trained to see things as yes/no, black/white, republican/democrat. But is that really life? Isn't life more of a spectrum, sure you need yin and yang to balance, but living and dying by yes/no?

The question begs to be asked then. How do we change our ways? And can we really see past the labels we assume and get to the core of a person? Place? Situation? And more locally what can I do? What will I do? Or is this the new normal and I am just now being terribly old-fashioned? I hope not. My mom is old-fashioned, not me. I choose to believe if we try, and I mean really try, we can see past the labels we assign and perhaps greater tolerance can be achieved.

See I told you this was a cumbaya post.  And in the immortal words of the now late Rodney King, "can't we all just get along?" Seems so simple.