By Gonny 
One of the strangest things about human beings is how quickly we divide ourselves into groups.
We do it almost automatically. We divide ourselves by nationality, religion, politics, skin color, language, culture, wealth, education, and countless other labels. We create categories and then begin to identify with them so strongly that we sometimes forget that every category is made up of the same thing: people.
Perhaps that is why the words “us” and “them” appear so often throughout history.
Every nation has spoken about “our people.” Every religion has spoken about “our believers.” Every political movement has spoken about “our side.” And almost every conflict, large or small, begins with the same invisible line being drawn somewhere in the mind.
On one side stands “us.”
On the other side stands “them.”
The curious thing is that these lines often seem perfectly real to the people who draw them, even though they are nowhere to be found in nature itself.
If you look at the Earth from space, you do not see countries. You do not see borders, immigration offices, customs checkpoints, or flags. You see oceans, forests, mountains, deserts, rivers, and cities spread across one small blue planet floating through an immense universe.
The Earth itself has never divided humanity.
We did.
Of course, practical agreements are necessary. Societies need laws, governments, and ways to organize themselves. But practical organization is one thing. Psychological separation is something entirely different.
The moment we begin to believe that one group of human beings is fundamentally different from another, we enter dangerous territory. We stop seeing individuals and start seeing categories. We stop seeing a person with hopes, fears, children, dreams, and struggles, and instead see a label.
Yet labels can be remarkably deceptive.
A child born today in Amsterdam will cry for exactly the same reasons as a child born in Damascus, New York, Nairobi, Rome, or Beijing. A mother worries about her children whether she lives in Europe, Africa, Asia, or America. A father hopes for a safe future regardless of the language he speaks. Everywhere on Earth people laugh, grieve, fall in love, suffer losses, and search for meaning.
The similarities are overwhelming once we take the time to notice them.
This raises an interesting question. Why is the human mind so easily tempted to divide the world into “us” and “them”?
Perhaps because separation creates a sense of identity. It tells us who we are by telling us who we are not. It offers the comfort of belonging to a group, a tribe, a nation, or a belief system. It gives us certainty in a world that often feels uncertain.
But that certainty comes at a price.
The stronger our attachment to “us,” the easier it becomes to fear “them.” And once fear enters the picture, curiosity begins to disappear. We no longer ask who someone is. We only ask what group they belong to.
History is filled with examples of this process. The names of the groups change from century to century, but the mechanism remains remarkably similar. People convince themselves that another group is responsible for their problems, threatens their future, or somehow deserves less compassion than their own group.
Yet when we look more closely, the differences often become surprisingly small.
Nobody chose where they were born. Nobody selected their nationality before entering this world. Nobody stood before a cosmic counter and requested a particular passport, language, religion, or skin color.
We simply arrived.
And then we spent years building identities around circumstances that were never our choice to begin with.
Perhaps that is why the question “Who is us?” is more profound than it first appears.
If I had been born somewhere else, under different circumstances, would I not think differently? Would I not speak another language, follow another tradition, carry different beliefs, and tell different stories about myself?
Most likely I would.
What remains when all those differences are stripped away is something remarkably simple.
A human being.
A conscious presence trying to navigate life as best it can.
Someone who wants to love and be loved.
Someone who wants safety, dignity, friendship, and meaning.
Someone who experiences joy and sorrow, hope and disappointment, success and failure.
In other words, someone very much like ourselves.
Perhaps future generations will look back at our time and be surprised by how much energy we invested in defending the boundaries between groups. They may wonder why we became so fascinated by the differences while overlooking the countless things we shared.
And perhaps they will discover something that has always been quietly present beneath all our labels, beliefs, flags, and identities.
There was never a separate “us” and “them.”
There were only human beings, temporarily forgetting that they belonged to one another.
With love nd light,
G.