I'm in Russia.

Weird. For some reason, I've never expected to visit Moscow. I was always naturally drawn to countries that I thought were really exotic. Countries like India, Thailand, China, Kenya, Iceland and Antarctica (is Antarctica a country?).

After doing a bit of traveling I realized that rating countries based on predetermined exoticness is ridiculous. No matter how in awe I am of a country before I go, the reality is the same. We are all people living on a little brown, blue and green ball endlessly falling through infinite space. We all cry, we all laugh, we all experience goodness and evil. We all are absorbed with our lives to some degree or another. We all eat. We all sleep. We are people.

We are humanity.

And we're really not that different. What is different is the environment we live in, different versions of similar things. In one country people live in huge apartment buildings, not a house to be seen. In other countries, people live out their peaceful lives in little countryside hamlets. Happiness, I've discovered, is not dependent on where you live or how much money you have. Happiness is tightly connected to understanding who you are and the meaning of your life.

The subtle differences are fascinating but our commonalities are comforting. We are different but we are family.

It disturbs me, then, that our global family's ultimate form of conflict resolution is to blow each other up. In what family, regardless of differences, is killing each other okay? Just a thought.