Fundamentally speaking….

(might open a big can of worms by writing this…. but –)

Started reading the book Kiterunner. My friend Hardee got it for me for Xmas. If you haven’t read it – do so; The book is hard to put down. I read a chapter this morning and it haunted me: during my run, my drive up to the city, in the shower- it’s intense. And hits me close to home... I have come up close and personal with many similar characters to those in the book: people like Baba, Ali and Hassan, Amir, Aseef and his lackeys, Aseef’s parents…

The book is a lot deeper than I thought it would be. It got me thinking…

You ever notice the small similarities between religious practices? Surya Namaskar is similar to Naamaz. (They have come to represent different ideologies- but have you even seen them done side by side?) Taking Prasad (food blessed by god) isn’t all that different from taking communion bread. Praying in almost every faith is similar in practice... and the list of little similarities (as well as fundamental similarities) goes forever on...

Faith is faith. Some people need it to make sense of the world, some don't. But why the animosity between? (And why do people believe that anyone is wrong if the names they call their god are different?)

Show me one kid who can distinguish between people of different religions, different castes, different races. You can’t. It’s impossible and it’s obvious in it's simplicity. Hatred is taught. Disgust and intolerance are tastes that are acquired.

It’s interesting and upsetting to me to see it unravel in the world around me: these grudges and old scores that are tens and hundreds of years old and unsettled, still unforgiven, still unrelenting. I’ve met so many people who try to school me on "what those people did" and "what these people did"…

It’s not that I want to remain ignorant. I don't condone violence in any shape or form. I don't condone hatred. I don’t want to turn a blind eye to all the injustice there is in the world…. (and here I'm going off an a tangent because I don't just refer to injustices as those steming from religious disputes …. but also injustice toward the environment... and concerning economic and educational disparities …. and the lack of equal access to healthcare, to food, to freedom, to information, to peace….. ) In any case, it is not that I want to be ignorant about any of these things.

But- what I DO want- is us, as a whole world of people, to recognize that by allowing past injustices (back to refering to racial and religious) to shape our future ….. we perpetuate it all. We have to (and should) acknowledge the past... and do what we each can to help those who were pushed down to stand up on their own feet again. But don't perpetuate the "these people" and "those people" .... because kids *grow up* LEARNING to see those differences. Seeds are planted to keep the hatred going. The same mentalities are passed on to the next generation of children, who will grow up and want to recify the past. IT WILL NEVER STOP.

As for me, I refuse to participate in this stupid cycle. I’ll teach my kids and any other kids that cross my path the importance of the similarities. I will refuse to draw lines. I will choose to let the similarities between people outweigh the differences. I'm going to bank on the people that see others as simply people, and see what we can do if we work together.

It’s kind of like in the book I mentioned earlier.... the kite string that characters use to fly kites are intwined with little shards of glass to cut down other kites in the sky. The people are so busy looking up at the kites they are trying to cut down that no one notices that the glass in the kite strings are also leaving their own hands cut and bloody. No one looks at their own hands.

I hope this makes sense, but it might not. It's only now that it's beginning to make sense to me.