Big Surprise: They want the same things we do!

Through the entire month of April, 2010, I was in China with my friends Andy and Xavier. We visited five cities, and spent time out in some small towns way off the gleaming highways of the new China. It was my first time in Asia, and all in all, a great adventure. Honk Kong, in particular, I found truly exhilarating. And if you want picturesque, Hangzhou is sheer delight.

We saw a lot of "the real China" you don’t hear about in western media—the human side—and mainly what struck me was how kindred to myself everyone was. Chinese people want the same things for their children as we do: health, love, prosperity and happiness. I may be going out on a limb here, but my guess is that everyone wants those things.

Of course, there are crazy people everywhere. But even for the oppressed and downtrodden, the individual's dream is always for more love, more freedom, more happiness. And why? Because that is what we’re made of. I believe we’re wired for caring and compassion; for the raising-up of the other...our long, sad history of war and small-mindedness notwithstanding.

Yet as we look around at a world in such great need of healing, why is it we can’t seem to find, on a societal level, that for which we are so ready to strive at the level of the individual?

What are we missing?

I suggest that much of our problems come from a sense of disconnectedness to each other. We have forgotten, somehow, that who we are includes each and every living thing of which we are a part...and from which no one is excluded.

The healing we seek as a race will not come from new systems, or yet another religion to divide us even further. It will only be found by embracing our innate Oneness. The world of peace we’ve always dreamed of will come—naturally—when we first recognize the literal fact that we are all One. This can start now if we consider peace...at least consider it!