I come from a small town in Ontario, Canada populated by mostly white, lower to middle class folks with largely rural values and a conservative world view.  I still remember the first student of African descent who went to my high school.  By my graduating year, I could count the students labelled as visible minorities on one hand.

When I moved to Toronto a few years later, I found the cultural melting pot I was looking for.  When I later moved to a city an hour West of Toronto, I got a job at a financial institution and I began working with individuals from all around the world.

What has been most apparent to me, is that cultural and ethnic differences are incredibly minor.  In a given day I’ll have conversations with someone from Eastern Europe, South America, the Middle East, South East Asia,  North Africa.  Our cultural upbringings and our skin tones are as varied as the colours on the map.  And none of it really matters.

Western culture can seem to highlight superficial cultural differences in news footage, movies, and media.  So much so that we can develop subconscious opinions about groups of people based on their cultural upbringing and ancestry.  When we meet someone new, we can so quickly see a turban, the melanin content of their hair and skin, a hijab, their bone structure.  And with that information, we make judgments and assumptions about an individual and suddenly, we’ve created a narrative that says this person is unlike me.

But the reality is so much simpler.  The minute you look another individual in the eye or shake their hand, there is a realization, “I can relate to this person”.  When you hear another’s voice, see their smile or hear them laugh, you feel their heart and a truth more basic than any preconceived conceptualization bubbles up: this person is a lot like me.

Let this not be taken as downplaying or dismissing cultural differences.  The richness, diversity and strength that comes with a multi-cultural society is an asset in every way.  Let us acknowledge and celebrate these differences!  But let us not dwell on them and certainly not allow them to influence our estimation of another’s worth.

At the end of the day, we all have the same basic human needs.  We all want a place to live and grow and connect with one another.  We want to raise children and provide them with a good life.  We want peace, happiness and fulfillment.  We have far more similarities than differences.  We may not always agree, but that’s just part of living with one another.  The same heart that beats in your chest beats within all 7.7 billion of us.