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Today, I was talking to one of my classmates. Whenever I talked to him, the conversation always converge to a certain topic and locked in one topic for long time. And I'm not talking about a serious life-related potential-to-change-life topic, we always ended up having a small talk that does not really matter. We always joked away our conversation.
Although I've been getting to know him for awhile, I feel like I don't really know him.
What he likes, what he is passionate about, what he wants to do with his life.
There are always people whom I have very hard time to get deeper with.
We've been talking how come we always end up having a small talk...no deep conversation, and he told me that we don't have a common ground.
We were not raised up in the same country, thus different mother tongues, differnt cultural and background. Not only that we had very different reasons to study, different views about money, different skills to engage with people, different interests, different political beliefs, the list goes on and on.
Only things we had in common was our "major" and "race" - we are both Asian.
It struck me later today that I do not have much common ground with majority of people I interact with.
ResStaff - I'm one of very few token FOBs among Baits ResStaffs.
Life Group - not many "true" Korean in my lifegroup.
Classmates - I was the only Asian kid in my class for awhile before our department picked up 6 students from SJTU. And again, Shanghainese are very different from Korean.
I thought it was really funny how I constantly interact with people whom I do not see much commonality within. And I thought to myself, what enables and makes me to close thoes gaps and to engage with different iinds of people.
Wait...are people that much differnt???
Many times, we overlook the fact that we all share the common ground of humanity because it is exponentially easier to identify something different. And in Christian context, we are all children of God. And I do many times overlook the fact that every single individuals in this earth is created and well beloved by God.
I look at the atrocity,pain, and suffering of this world.
Do we need eloquent, well-written, rational and mind-grasping reasons to help one another?
or we are called to help another because of the very fact that we are all human and everyone desires the sense of happiness.
For me, answer is pretty clear.
1 comment:
Good thoughts Hong Yoon. I have reflected as well on "common ground" though I don't think I find myself nearly as isolated as you are (alone on your little patch of ground, with no one to share it.)
I loved what you said about the common ground who share with every other person, becaues we are all "created and well beloved by God."
I was also really struck by your challenge:
"Do we need eloquent, well-written, rational and mind-grasping reasons to help one another?"
On a similar track, I have sometimes questioned- does someone really need to prove themselves for us to love them? Why don't we love strangers? Because we don't know them yet. I think our daily interactions would look very different if we gave people the benefit of a doubt, before a word left their mouth, that they are worthy of love.
I look forward to reading more of your thoughts!
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