What unites us and divides us?
As women and men, as adults and children, as different races and creeds and colors, as the haves and the have-nots, as humans.
How can we cross to the other side of the chasm between us, to a new perspective, a new point of view? Is it even possible to generate real understanding? Can we walk in someone else’s shoes and leave ours behind, find and use all their filters and lenses of experience that cannot help but alter the plain truth of seeing and hearing?
I would like to believe it’s possible. I would like to believe that our imaginations can take us anywhere we truly wish to go. I am trying. I am trying.
This is the hardest, most necessary work we ever do. We have to let the rivers of reality and fantasy wash over us in equal amounts. We have to accept where we are if we are to chart the course to where we want to go.
To make the climb. To take the journey. To walk and walk and walk until finally, mercifully, we sink down to the ground of compassion and empathy, letting it cradle and support us, until we find the strength to rise and say, “Now, I understand.”
Christa Avampato 