The Other

How resolutely we compete, how quickly we search for race or religion, color or creed, sex preference or politics to call our fellows the Other, different from us and to be scorned. But what if there was no us or Other and we were all just we? Would we as doggedly battle us against us, as in a struggle of you against me? Consider the scores of people we meet, who in our mundane exchanges we touch and by them are touched, on whom we leave our mark and their mark we carry on us. We walk away, both us and them, now a part of each other, and both pass that to brothers and kin, so no lectures on exponential growth are needed to show us how far a speck of ourselves might have traveled, passed along from this person to that, or however many have touched us until the circle is closed and we are brother to those we have hated. This might seem confusing, but on one thing we should agree-- we share this universe in which we live, its air, its water, its souls commingling, their joy, their pain, so we should think first of the Other as me.

Bluejay

Veteran of old My Poetry Forum before its hiatus. Happy to be back.

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