Why We Need To Widen Our Screen To View The World

For all of my childhood, I lived in the same place, around the same people. All of my extended family lived in the same town. I had the same friends, with a few exceptions from other schools in the area, from kindergarten to twelfth grade. Before I got a job, at sixteen, where I worked with people of different ages, religions, and races, I had little exposure to other cultures and views.

My parents had lived different experiences. Mom went to a very diverse school and my dad had been in the Air Force, so they taught us to be open to all people from all places, even if they looked or acted different then us.

After moving to Bloomington, to attend Indiana University, the world completely opened up to me. I felt so lucky to meet and live with so many people from all over the world. I was curious to learn from them and try to understand more about where they came from and the cultures they grew up in. I wanted to widen my screen every day.

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I saw this Proctor and Gamble commercial on a friend's Facebook page and it made my heart sing. So much of what we see of other cultures is what we see on the news. For that reason, our view of the world, and other people, is very small and often times untruthful. We tend to judge others by what we see, instead of by who they are as fellow human beings.

This ad speaks volumes of why we all need to widen our screen.

Watching this ad, brought to mind three Netflix series I have watched that can help widen your screen. The first one is a thrilling mystery from Turkey.

Dark, is a series from Germany. It is one of the most compelling shows I have ever watched. The story was weaved together like a puzzle. I left every episode with a need to solve it.

The third series is from Australia. Granted, it's kind of about zombies, but it is a great mystery that shows us life in a beautiful and rich country.

The reason I even mentioned these Netflix shows is that they all have a common human theme, love. Love of family, friends, career, and other people. Yes, the settings are different, they might eat different things, decorate their houses differently, drive different cars, speak different languages, and practice different faiths. But, what I loved about each of these shows and the fact that with streaming services like Netflix we get to watch them, is that we get to see that even with some differences we are all basically the same.

We love, we get scared, we cry, we celebrate, we encourage, we defend, we help, we argue, we learn, we work, we LIVE the human experience and we are all doing the best we can.

There are people that do bad things in all cultures. Evil and hate are not exclusive to certain cultures, countries, or people. Stop seeing the world as we vs them and start seeing the world; every race, culture, religion, sexual orientation, gender, as US. Open your mind and your heart to empathy and love.