Little Differences

January 4, 2008


A couple days ago I spent some time talking with an elderly woman, and the first thing that came to my mind as I sat down and started talking with her was how different we were. I immediately felt sorry for her…I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to not have most of my teeth and to not be able to walk well. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have ailments, to not have my freedom and independence to run and jump and do whatever it was I wanted to do on a daily basis. We might as well have been of two different species the way I saw her at first.

Then, as if she knew what I was thinking, she lifted the strand of beads she wore around her neck and pointed to the beaded necklace I was wearing.

‘We have the same necklace,’ she was saying.

Well naturally her 99 beads of Allah that she displayed weren’t the same as the beaded necklace my Annau family brought me back from India, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that she was showing me that we were similar.

So I thought about why I was so quick to point out our differences, and I wondered what it would be like if every person I met I immediately noticed the ways in which we were similar instead.

We spent the afternoon talking about all sorts of things…she told me many stories from her life, about her days as a seamstress sewing blankets, her children, her children’s children, and so on. She was old and sick but she was happy to be with her family every day. She spoke slowly so I could understand her Turkmen and was kind and open-hearted and she passed no judgment on me.

When I grow up, I think I’d like to be like her.

My Resolutions for 2008: To bring people together with their similarities
To be true to myself, and my hopes and dreams
To read and speak Russian
To gain the highest level of patience possible
To make people smile.