Many say that people leave hand prints on our hearts, and much like tattoos, these can often be permanent. The reason for this is because one of humanity’s main quests is the search for a sense of belonging, a kinship of sorts. This sense of community can be found through and in many different things: religion, family, common interests, school, and more. We can find a common ground in these things which leads us to the understanding of love. Everyone is on his and her own path for love, but we cannot help but to cross paths. In the end, we discover that humans are not so different from each other.
Sometimes people believe that certain lives are more important than others. We're better if we're rich. We're better if we're pretty. We're better if we're smart. If we're skinny or white or straight or male or normal. However, regardless of who we are or where we come from, every life is valuable. We grow and shape ourselves based off of our experiences, and often the people around us shape those experiences, thus affecting us. Sometimes because of the people we meet, we learn to be who we truly are.
In searching for this kinship, we often discover a sense of community. With a sense of community, we will accept that nobody is more or less important than ourselves. In order to build this community, we have to learn to understand each other. We are more likely to understand someone if we walk in his or her shoes and until then, we cannot say our lives are more important than someone else’s because we have yet to experience their life as they have. Once we realize this, we'll realize that it doesn't matter if someone is different than us because we're all alive searching for this sense of community.
It is a mystery why exactly humans feel the need to belong. Maybe it is because we would not be as advanced now if we had not worked together. Or maybe, somewhere deep inside of us, there’s a hole that can only be filled by a sense of community. Without having others in our lives, we would not succeed as a human race. We need each other to push each other to go further in life. We need companionship. We need the compassion found in loving each other. We need someone to tell us that we’re loved. We need that sense of belonging in order to feel like we have a purpose, a place. Sometimes we can find self-love in others, and we take this love and we spread it, building a kinship that keeps away all of the awful possessions, like shame and doubt. Once we have this kinship, then we are able to recognize that we all came here to grow through each other, and through each other our differences disappear. Then we realize that we really are not that different from each other after all.
