“Maybe there’s more that brings us together than we think.”
Sometimes, we tend to group, label, and separate ourselves from others that we often fail to see the things we have in common once we step out of these defining boxes and strip off these labels.
In a video called “All That We Share,” Danish TV station TV2 shows us that despite our differences, we have much more in common than what we think.
The video opens with people stepping into boxes and grouping themselves into what defines them: “The high earners” vs. “Those just getting by”; “Those we trust” vs. “Those we try to avoid”; “The new Danes” (immigrants) vs. “Those who have always been here” (natives).
They all seem to have nothing in common at first, but when the moderator asked questions like: “Who in this room was the class clown?” and “Who are stepparents?”, we see people stepping out and joining the others. We see people from supposedly different groups come together: those who loved to dance, those who have been bullied, those who have bullied others, those who are madly in love, and even those who feel lonely.
These days, we live in a divisive world with an “us versus them” or the “majority versus the minority” mentality. We box ourselves against the rest of the world. We easily divide ourselves into groups yet find it hard to see what we have in common — what we all share.
This video reminds us how important embracing diversity is. We need to focus on what unites us, instead of what doesn’t. By doing so, maybe we can all prove, just like what Maxine Medina said, that “we are one… as one nation, we are all together.”