We are Family

In December, a friend of mine posted this fascinating article about how everyone on Earth is actually your cousin. As if to hammer the point home, while watching People will Talk with Cary Grant, my dad announced Jeanne Crain is my cousin. What? You could have knocked me over with a feather.

Of course I think it’s cool that I’m related to a famous actress, but what I find even more interesting is the idea that I am literally related to everyone on Earth. Think about it: Even if we’ve never met before, we are related, we are family. What makes me laugh is that my spiritual teacher emphasizes this point over and over: that we are a universal family, that we are all brothers and sisters, and now I’ve stumbled across an article that gives credence to that idea.

What would the world look like if we behaved as if we were one big family? I can’t help but think we would treat other a little better. That there wouldn’t be an anti-immigration stance popping up in politics. That homelessness would be a thing of the past. That there wouldn’t be so much income inequality. But mostly, that we would show true caring for one another.

This is not a pipe dream, by the way. It may feel like that right now, but I know it’s not completely out of the realm of reality. I know this because I interact with people every day who hold the view point that we are all brothers and sisters. I see people taking a stance against racism, people who are outraged about police brutality, people who want to help unaccompanied minors fleeing their native lands in search of a better life. We are more compassionate, we are more loving. Life is not nearly as brutal as it used to be.

Instead of seeing the person down the street as “other,” I see more and more evidence we view that person as family. Let’s keep up this trend. Let’s keep opening our hearts, expanding our radius of love, and treating each other as if we were related, because it turns out, we are.

I dream of a world where we treat each other as family. A world where we extend care and appreciation to strangers because we recognize, they, too, are our brothers and sisters. A world where we keep taking action to manifest a world we wish to see.

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.