Why can't we be nicer? Are we so worried that someone might encroach upon our delicate existence of formulated happiness that we can't take a literal second to acknowledge another person's existence with eye contact, a nod, or a smile? To ask someone how their day is and welcome a more thorough response than the generic 'good!' to which we all tend to defer? Or to take an extra minute for the very small act of fixing our parking job so someone else can fit next to us even though we have the excuse that it's so snowy we can't see the lines on the pavement?

Being kind is not convenient and we live in a convenience-driven society. The only way to change cruelty to kindness and hatred to love is to choose. We must choose to live intentionally in order to spread compassion. We must choose to find a common ground of humanity. It starts with you and it starts with me. Kindness starts small and grows, just like hatred. Please don't let the convenience of negativity take over. Light a tiny spark of warmth and watch it spread like wildfire.

You are different from me, I am different from you. You come from a different town, a different home, a different family. Your parents are different; maybe they hurt you, maybe they supported and celebrated you, maybe they don't even feel like your parents at all. You have a different job than me. You wear different clothes and have different skin and your face looks different than mine. You love differently, you hurt differently, you cry differently than me.

You show up for people and shut people out differently than me. You're taller than me or shorter than me. You speak more languages than me or praise a different god than me. Our bodies are different, our bodies like different things. You hide differently and fear different things than me. You might shudder at the things I love or who I love, I might cringe at the way you think.

You hold experiences inside of you that I will never know, and you've experienced darkness that maybe no one will ever know. I invite you to meet me in that darkness, in that common space where we all crumble so we can leave some pieces behind in the darkness and emerge as something changed. Meet me there as a human being. As a person that, despite our endless, sometimes crippling differences, shares the twisted experience of existing in this world as a living, breathing, loving human.

Meet me there and I will smile at you. I will see you. I will make room for you.