I think we’ve forgotten how to exist with one another.

Not physically. We’re everywhere. We sit beside strangers on buses, bump into each other at the grocery store, walk past hundreds of people a day. We share classrooms, work places, sidewalks, restaurants, comment sections, group chats. We are surrounded by people constantly.

And somehow, I have never felt more disconnected from society.

Maybe it is because we have become so accustomed to seeing people through categories.

Political party, religion, gender, race, identity, class, age, career, beliefs, opinions, the things we love, the things we hate.

We meet someone, and sometimes without even realising it, begin placing them into a box.

What do they believe?

Who did they vote for?

What religion are they?

What side are they on?

What kind of person does that make them?

And once we think we know the answer, we stop being curious.

That might be one of the strangest things about being human: we want desperately to be understood, yet we are often so unwilling to understand anyone else.

When did disagreement become something we have to survive rather than something we can simply experience?

When did having different beliefs mean that we could no longer have meaningful conversations?

When did saying, “I don’t agree with you,” become so close to saying, “I don’t respect you. You don’t deserve space in this world.”

I don’t think our differences are inherently the only problem. In fact, differences are probably one of the most beautiful things about humanity. Imagine if every person thought the same way, believed the same things, wanted the same things, feared the same things. There would be no real curiosity. No challenging of ideas. No reason to ask real questions.

The problem is what we do with those differences.

We turn them into walls.

We find a community that agrees with us, and suddenly everyone outside of it becomes the other.

Online, this happens even faster. Algorithms learn what makes us angry, what keeps us watching, what confirms what we already believe. We can spend an entire day surrounded by thousands of opinions without ever genuinely encountering a perspective that challenges our own.

And then we wonder why everyone feels so divided.

But how much of our worldview actually belongs to us?

How much of what we believe did we consciously choose?

How much was handed to us by our families, our friends, our schools, our communities, our religions, our politics, our experiences?

If we had been born somewhere completely different, surrounded by completely different people, would we still believe everything we believe now?

And if the answer is no, what does that say about the certainty with which we defend those beliefs?

I think about that question a lot.

There is something humbling about realising that you could have been born into an entirely different life and sincerely believed something completely different.

That person standing across from you might not be stupid. They might not be evil. They might simply have lived a different life.

They might have been taught different things. Loved different people. Experienced different losses. Been afraid of different things. Found comfort in different places.

Understanding that doesn’t require us to abandon our beliefs. It simply forces us to remember that another human being exists on the other side of them.

And perhaps that’s what we’re missing.

Not more opinions, not more information, not more people shouting into microphones. Maybe we are simply missing curiosity.

The willingness to ask, “Why do you believe that?” without secretly preparing an argument.

The willingness to hear an answer without immediately deciding what it says about someone’s character.

The willingness to say, “I don’t know.”

The willingness to change our minds.

To admit that sometimes we are wrong.

How often do we actually do that?

How often do we listen to understand instead of listening to respond?

How often do we speak to someone we disagree with and leave the conversation knowing more about them than we did before?

Got you there, didn’t I?

Good, I’ll do it again.

When was the last time you genuinely allowed someone to change your mind?