If only we spent less time sorting people into us and them.

Men and women, athletes and nerds, smart and dumb, black and white, rich and poor, young and old.

We find hundreds and hundreds of ways to separate ourselves from one another.

We mostly get along, but he’s really got his head up his a$$ on this presidential election…She’s okay, but her kid’s a real punk…The kid’s a natural on the court, he’ll write his own ticket while mine’ll be lucky to get into State…Those snot nosed rich kids act like they should have the world handed to them on a platter…If those black guys had just respectfully followed instructions they wouldn’t have been shot…If those cops weren’t prejudiced and on a power high they wouldn’t have shot those black guys…

And on and on it goes.

The endless number of ways we see ourselves as separate.  Different.  Better or less than others on the planet.  Ways we pare down other people until they fit into our molds of how we see them.

But what if we dropped all of that for just a moment and saw every single human being as a soul traveling around the same sun we are.  Souls learning their own lessons as they move through life.

If you really open up your mind to the possibilities you’ll see that every single soul is here to teach you something.  An older black man’s personal insight on the civil rights movement is invaluable.  A young black teen knows what it’s like to walk through society in brown skin. Women, gays, straights, military, hippies, gun lovers and gun haters alike – all with a unique perspective.  Children, the ones most often dismissed, can be our greatest teachers.  How to find patience in ourselves.  Learning to sit with the hard emotions.  Taking the way they trigger us to work on our own issues.

If we could stop sorting…if we could truly listen to one another instead of marking time until it’s our turn to shout again…then perhaps we finally could learn about the other souls sharing our space.

And then who knows what might happen?

Linda’s prompt for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday is “if/then.”

Check out the details here.  You can also find some other awesome blogs to check out – just scroll down to the comments section and click on their links.

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on Sundays!