On the same side

I guess it’s all part of the same reducing isolation/building community/loving one another kind of goal, but I’ve recently noticed that I function much better when I decide people are on the same side as me. Sometimes I feel as if some people are not, and I find that hard. The times when I feel most at ease with the world, and myself, is when I remember that actually, we’re all in this together. There’s a song I like, that includes the line “we’re on this road: you, me, everybody together” and I often play it in the car and like to imagine that all the people sharing the literal road with me are actually fighting similar battles and probably have a common/similar purpose. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want everyone to be the same as me, or want the same as me – I still love that we’re all different and have diverse things that make us tick, motivate us, shape who we are. But I find it much more helpful to remember the commonalities – sometimes a shared situation like a traffic jam means it's easy to think we probably all want a similar outcome of moving along soon, sometimes I have to use a bit more imagination.

It’s the searching for the common humanity notion, the belief that we all are working for good, rather than succumbing to the fear that everyone is in it for themselves, that the world is against us. Cos my experiences of life and of people, is that yes, we’re all hurting and so hit out, or pull inside ourselves, from time to time, and that can be hard to be around. But mainly, people again and again are kind and compassionate, and act in ways that are not from self interest. Maybe I’m just lucky, maybe it is in part the way that we see. But what I know is that when I think I’m up against others, it is way way harder to live and love, than when I remind myself that me and the person I’m in conflict with are actually in it together after all.