Maybe…

Maybe we will never truly understand. Maybe that’s ok.

We live with the hot, pungent breath of difference everyday. Unavoidably, we see smell taste feel its presence in our lives. People who don’t see behave or feel like us. Believe in other beings, other divinities. Love differently. Love animals, instead of love men. Own fewer smartphones. Eat with chopsticks, instead of hands. Left-handed, instead of right-winged.

But are we just going to leave it at: it stinks! Are we just going to say: so f*#ked up. Are we going to screech, desperate: Racial Harmony, so there. Are we going to shake our heads and say, disgrace (subtext: I’m not like them. Really, I’m not).

I find this very unsatisfying, to put full stops to people. To place them into boxes and then walk away saying, “all the same”.

Maybe the solution isn’t to slap bright stickers like HARMONY or DANGER on these cracks. Maybe the solution isn’t to poke out each other’s eyes.

Maybe we need to acknowledge how difficult it is to actually live in difference.

Maybe first we need to disbelieve these neat boxes, these (colonial) labels on our passports, saying we’re same, but actually different, but same. Maybe we need to see that we are each singularly, uniquely, unbelievably, unavoidably different, even after race language or religion.

Because we don’t understand. We cannot. Because we are simply so different, even within our own safe similar boxes.

Maybe complete understanding isn’t easy, or even possible. Maybe that’s why we need to keep listening, and speaking.

And maybe that’s why the conversation must not end. We must continue to disagree, agree, concur, contest – continue to ask, why. The conclusions must not hold. The shells should not harden.

Otherwise we go back to our same poorly told tales. Then we become disgusting, dirty, lazy, greedy again. We revert to being bogeymen (to each other). We become ungodly, or unruly, or unmanly. Or whatever unimaginative labels are being issued these days.

Maybe we need to keep listening, talking, and thinking. Instead of full stops, to acknowledge: we are so different, I still have things to learn.

That I still have new skins, and shadows, and stories to grow, to make, to share, to hear from you.

Maybe. I don’t know