You know, that human thing..?

Ever wondered how we could ease tension at work? Wish the neighbours would stop screeching and carrying on? You’re waiting in line at the supermarket and the person in front of you is taking forever and all you want to do is go home and devour the potato gems you’re about to buy?

Patience runs low, I get it. You’re hangry, I know. You need to go home and eat. But the person in front of you is SO SLOW. This is how wars start.

I’m appealing to some everyday, basic needs here. We can all relate. And that’s just it… we can all relate.

It’s so easy to forget that we have more in common than we do in difference.

Let me say it again. We have more in common than we realise (or care to remember), and yet we bicker, complain, judge, exclude, isolate, blame and start to build negative and unhealthy narratives about others… because we think we, or they, are different. This is how wars start.

Our human connection is like a spider web, sparkling with early morning dew in the sunlight. It is the invisible thread of our human race. We hold connection and innate similarities across genders, cultures, races, religions, sexuality, ages. And yet, we so often look first to what makes us different, rather than what makes us innately the same.

Too often we polarise and label, leaving us in isolation and pain. Our families, communities and world is fragmented. Even our individual selves can be in disconnect with our authentic self and values - we say one thing and do another, and boy do we judge ourselves harshly.

However there is good news.

Nature is always here to remind us, ever so calmly and non-judgementally, that everything within us and surrounding us is striving for balance. Homeostasis. Everything in nature is always asking us to balance.

What this looks like in practice might vary from person to person. For me, connection is linked with respecting, accepting and welcoming the other. The opposite of who or what I am, cannot be balanced without the opposite of who or what you are. My masculine cannot be complete without my feminine. My light cannot be complete without my dark.

So while it may seem contradictory to on one hand say, we have more in common than we think; and on the other hand say, our differences balance each other out, hold that thought. Here is where the magic happens.

We have a paradigm. A very human and beautiful paradigm. A complexity that we all share.

In striving for connection - homeostasis - we balance each other. Where we see difference negatively, we need to practice pausing and reaching out for new narratives that ask, ‘What is it that you have that I don’t have, or you can do that I can’t do? And how can I love and learn from that, while you love and learn from me.” I’ve come to believe that we cannot have one without the other.

It’s a very human thing.