Spice of Life

In the end we are all separate; our stories, no matter how similar, come to a fork and diverge. We are drawn to each other because of our similiarities, but it is our differences that bring spice to life. ~Unknown

My last night in Switzerland is at an end. I spent the evening with friends and friends of friends first in an English pub then at a trendy bar adjacent to the train station just a few minutes walk from my hotel. All of us that were chatting and drinking tonight were from locations other than Switzerland and all but one of us, will be staying in the country for months to come. We were American, Indian, West German, East German and Russian.

We talked of our experiences in other parts of the world. We talked of our jobs. We talked of the people we have met and shared the stories that come from travel. We talked about our families and our dreams and the dreams we have of one day having families. We talked of our own countries. We asked questions about theirs. We laughed when recalling moments of embarrassment that arose from the confusion during interactions with people from other cultures. We struggled when trying to describe things which have no clear words in other languages. We laughed when one person was describing a meal in her own country and the description came out as chicken balls made from beef. We laughed and we talked and we shared and we learned. We enjoyed the play of words. We enjoyed each other's company. We relished the differences in each other that add spice to our lives.

Before downing my last Jameson and Ginger and heading back to my hotel room, I witnessed the carnage of love gone sour, the tears of a woman flowing because she has feelings for someone that is and always will be unattainable, a relationship whose potential is as ephemeral as a mirage on the horizon, the closer she  thinks she gets the more distant the object of her desires moves, always close enough to touch yet never near enough to grasp. It took me back four years when my heart was broken and I too shed tears. The tears reminded me that despite our differences, despite being raised in different parts of the world, despite having cultural backgrounds that are very dissimilar, despite having different views on the walk through life, despite being brown or white, black or yellow, male or female, deep down, at our core we are all human. Those tears, streaming pearls which can convey both wondrous joy and excruciating pain, show that at our core we are much more alike than we are different.