Over the past year I’ve mostly refrained from commenting on the many violent conflicts happening around the globe—partly because I feel ill informed and unable to fully comprehend the deeply rooted, ancient challenges faced by marginalized groups all over the world, and partly because there are so many atrocities happening here in the United States.

If screaming into the void can make any difference at all (which is doubtful), it’s more likely to help effect change here at home.

Over the past few days, I’ve changed my mind because I feel like all of the conflicts share a common thread. They seem to point to a loss of compassion and empathy for our fellow human beings.

We are being force-fed this narrative that we should be afraid of “other” people. And it’s bullsh*t. I know that, and I think anyone who has ever traveled outside of their hometown knows that.

Here is what else I know:

A few years ago I spent about a month living in a hostel with a few of my favorite cousins in Costa Rica. We stayed in a surf town called Santa Teresa where a lot of young people live in hostels for months at a time.

Santa Teresa has a large population of Israeli immigrants. There was a group of around 15 people at this hostel who had been there for months; they were like a family and they quickly enveloped me into their circle. Among them were these two guys, probably in their mid 20s, who were the best of friends. I just assumed they were both Israeli, and that they had known each other their entire lives and traveled to Costa Rica together. I’ve never really seen another male friendship quite like theirs.

They slept in bunkbeds, surfed together every morning at dawn, prepared meals for the group together, went fishing, and when we all went out at night, they were constantly acting as each other’s wingmen and flirting with all the pretty girls. Their friendship was contagious. After hanging out with them for like a week, we were all reading Tarot and drinking wine and one of them mentioned something about growing up Muslim in Palestine. I was shocked—I didn’t know much about Israel and Palestine at the time, but I thought they were sworn enemies.

Of course, I had to dig in. It turned out these best friends met at the hostel. One was Palestinian, and the other was Israeli and had just finished his mandatory military service. They laughed at my shock and told me that it wasn’t nearly as big of a deal as we all make it out to be in the states, and that the majority of people don’t even care—it’s their governments that create all the drama and violence.

Similarly, in college I befriended this super cool Iranian man studying engineering. He was handsome and kind and soft spoken, and one day I asked him what it was like growing up in Iran. He said it was pretty strict, but his parents weren’t and most peoples’ parents remember the time before religious fundamentalism. I asked him if he was allowed to talk to girls. He laughed and said the teenagers would sneak out of the house at night to hold hands and steal kisses in the dark, something I’m sure anyone with strict parents can relate to—except in this case if they were caught they could be flogged or even stoned to death. He said none of the “normal” people in his country agreed with the current government or wanted to live in a theocracy.

The other night, I was at a concert and John Butler performed. In between songs he spoke about the current state of the world. He said that most of us, besides those who have been in active combat, have seen the most terrifying and traumatizing things we’ve ever witnessed on our cell phones in the last 600 days. He’s right. We’re all going to need a lot of therapy after seeing children ripped from the arms of their immigrant mothers, and babies starving to death in Gaza. It’s horrific. But it has also lifted the curtain.

You can go on social media and see people who are living in the midst of an actual genocide and hear their stories first hand. You can watch as they start up a soccer game with local kids surrounded by buildings reduced to rubble, but still searching for moments of joy.

You can watch an American travel blogger bike through Iran and hang out with some of the kindest people who offer him food, tea, and lodging in their homes.

You can literally walk outside your door and get to know your immigrant neighbors and ask them about their stories and realize how much beauty and culture they brought with them.

Ask yourself whether you truly feel that their presence in your community is causing any harm. If you do, you’ll realize that we all have more similarities than differences, and that the majority of people on this earth are good. We all just want a peaceful, happy life.

The people we should fear are those who seek to make us afraid of one another. They want us poor and angry and afraid so that they can keep the machine cranking away and keep feeding their greed. Never forget that the military industrial complex makes some people extremely rich.

I am grateful for our service members, and I believe many of them seek to defend the free world and protect us, but I will never believe that acts of violence will create lasting peace. So what will? Connection and communication.

If you are a person who prays, I urge you to pray for peace and to pray that we are able to collectively open our hearts as a species and realize we are all the same, once and for all. I pray that all those who seek to perpetuate violence in order to gain power face justice in this life and the next.

And I pray we realize that we are closest to Source/God/Goddess when we act with love and acceptance in our hearts.

~