The thing I like about people is, they’re people.

No matter where you go, people are people. Can you believe that?

See, I thought (when I moved to Taipei), that this dark-haired multitude would be somehow different than me. And, of course, they were. I mean, the things they liked to eat and the way they did their hair—that kind of thing. But when it came down to the REAL stuff, the stuff that makes people people, they were exactly like me!

I wanted to test out my theory, though, so I moved to Hong Kong. Hong Kong is bigger and more crowded than Taipei. As the world’s leading international business center, it holds more different kinds of people, too. In Hong Kong I could observe hundreds, no, thousands of people from all over the world every day. The MTR was a superb testing site.

It was grueling work, jostling amongst strangers. But when the results came in, the data was clear: People are people! Whether Asian or Indian or European or Russian or . . ., people everywhere have the same basic traits.

See, we all want to be loved. That one’s for sure. And we all like food. That one’s also 100 percent. We’re all a bit self-conscious. About 90 percent. And girls and boys everywhere are similar. For example: It’s usually the girls who wear high heels and giggle and the boys who wear basketball shoes and guffaw. Not the other way around. Usually. (Of course, there are always exceptions, but we’re not delving into Thailand’s lady men right now.)

No matter where we’re from, we all like to laugh. But we don’t laugh enough. For many reasons. Unless, of course, we’re a comedian. Then we have other problems. But I’m not funny so I don’t really know.

Oh, and, we all have a story. This one is definitely 100 percent. We tell our stories in many different ways: the way we act, the way we dress, the way we carry ourselves, the way we brush our teeth. Some of us have good stories; some of us have bad. None of us have perfect stories. But all of us are interested in other people’s stories.

Take my research, for example. While making observations on the MTR, I realized everyone else was conducting the same study on me. Everyone kept looking and staring and glancing away at their shoes and then looking again. And not just at me, but at everyone!  It was as if they couldn’t help themselves. As if they were inextricably drawn to each other. As if . . .

As if they knew something all of us had known all along:

Our stories are the things that connect us. If we can begin to understand and love one another, we can begin to understand and love ourselves.

(Are we crazy?)

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