Human Family

In a growing global community, we are seeing people struggle to understand the cultures of others.  Too often we see this manifest itself in the creation of a “them” and “us” way of seeing our fellow human beings.  Yet as Maya Angelou says in her poem, Human Family, “we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike”.  This piece celebrates our differences and our similarities.

blue kaleidoscope

Set to the music of Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie: No. 1

The labels we use

In today’s global economy more and more people are being brought together from many parts of not only this country but also the world.  Gone are the days when you lived and worked with a group of people who shared all of your customs, traditions and beliefs.  We are being asked to move beyond the culture in which we were raised and to learn about cultures that until recently were foreign to some.

 This combined with the increasingly divisive political culture in this country have made it more important than ever to think about how we define each other. How we perceive each other.  Words like Conservative, Feminist, and Immigrant are being used to define us, yet they have a subtext of meaning that goes beyond the word itself. We have come to rely on these words as a simple shorthand when describing people, especially people different than ourselves. But are these the words they would have chosen for themselves? Do they give us a true measure of that person?