If this were a fairy tale, there would have to be a secret somewhere in the plot.
In our case, there actually is. The great confounding secret of learning how 6 billion of us frogs and princes can get along well enough to save the fairy princess in the tower. Trouble is, the secret has been eluding us forever.
As one of the frogs, here's a small suggestion. Might we all -- frogs, princes and princesses alike -- drink from this same thought. Every one of us does at least three things in common each day. From whatever corner of the planet or from whatever demographic on the chart, each of us: Gets up in the morning...eats a few meals in the day...then goes to bed at night to find the rest to do it all over again.
Not an especially spectacular trilogy, I grant, but its raw indisputable commonality might be a good starting point to realize we've enough in common to try a helluva lot harder to understand one another before we kill one another.
* Getting up ranges from wheat farmers in Kansas to sheep herders in Australia to breakfast bakeries in Rome to bankers in Bavaria to students in college dorms, all reluctantly throwing off those comforting blankets and crawling to the morning mirror. There we stand, often staring and wondering why. Why in God's name am I so tired, so here, and so skeptical that this day will turn out the way I want? Still...we wash, dress, and try once again!
* The days' meals come in twos or threes. Maybe a quick coffee and toast at home, a bag lunch on the job, if our prince and princess lineage is just so, a two-hour affair over fine wines later in the day. Whatever and wherever, we all house the very same tummies and thoughts which need periodic refueling. Eating to live or living to eat is always a question. But while there's no one right answer, whoever we are there is always the one same question!
* Going to bed at night -- be we pope, president or prime minister -- has to be among the most universal of human rituals. It's been a long day. Good one or a failed one, body and mind both demand rest. A rest which comes in different shadowy ways for each of, for each of us carries to our beds different specters. Still, for just a bold moment, don't all 6 billion of us sometimes find bedtime the greatest single curtain-parting in our collective humanity? When all 6 billion of us sometimes get a peek into the secret. On those nights when sleep comes quickly and dreams play gently, don't all 6 billion of us feel, for just a little while, what it's like? To like everything and everyone in our dream?
Maybe dreams like that are the secret worth taking with us into the day ....
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