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On my way to work this morning, while pondering topics for my first TLL post, this radio essay came on. If you click the link, you have the option of either hearing it or reading it. (Yeah, I listen to NPR. The BBC, too. It’s a character flaw.)

This I Believe is a national media project engaging people in writing, sharing, and discussing the core values and beliefs that guide their daily lives. NPR airs these three-minute essays on All Things Considered, Tell Me More and Weekend Edition Sunday.

It spoke to me deeply, and also had the added benefit of being an easy first post, because it answers the February topic “Do you think you are really different from other people?”

The author of that essay, Staci White, basically said it all for me. At the heart of the matter, for me, is my deep-rooted belief that I am not different from anyone else. I was shaped and influenced by my grandparents, who taught me that the measure of any person is their work ethic. Not their color. Not their religion. Not their marital status. Not their age. If you work hard, and do your best to be a decent person, then I don’t really have room or reason to have a gripe with you.

As Staci says, we are 99.9% identical from a genetic standpoint. I think we get into trouble because of our instinctive drive to stand out from the crowd in order to attract an appropriate mate, but to blend in with the crowd to stay alive. Nobody ever said evolution was pretty. The evolution of the human animal seems to have created some seriously conflicting impulses.

I love those people who take the time and energy to rise above that lizard-brain set of hardwired responses, and actually think about who they are and what they want to present to the world. Awareness is sexy.

I may believe differently than you do. I may think differently than you do. I may want a different car, computer, neighborhood than you do.

But the blood’s all the same color when it’s being spilled, and all tears are made up of salt water.

Not so different, after all.