28/08/2026
๐๐๐ ๐๐๐๐๐๐๐๐ | ๐๐ง๐ญ๐ซ๐ฒ #5 ๐ฐโจ
"๐ป๐ฏ๐ฌ ๐บ๐ท๐จ๐ช๐ฌ๐บ ๐ฉ๐ฌ๐ป๐พ๐ฌ๐ฌ๐ต ๐ผ๐บ"
By Sophia Erzsabeth Wasawas
There is a strange distance between people that cannot be measured in kilometers.
It exists in the words we use.
Male. Female. Transgender. Black. Asian. Caucasian. Straight. Gay. Bisexual. Asexual.
We live in a world that has become increasingly conscious of identity.
We have learned to name the parts of ourselves that previous generations may have struggled to articulate. We have found communities in people who understand us, language for experiences we once thought were ours alone, and comfort in knowing that somewhere, someone else exists who feels the way we do.
There is nothing inherently wrong with labels. A label is a mirror. It allows a person to look at themselves and finally say, This is something I understand about myself. This is where I belong.
But what happens when we stop saying, โThis is one part of who I am,โ and begin believing, โThis is all that I amโ?
A girl is not simply a girl. A boy is not simply a boy. A person is not simply their race, sexuality, religion, political belief, social class, personality, appearance, or any other category society has created to make human beings easier to understand.
We are contradictions. We are memories and mistakes, fears and ambitions, kindness and anger, childhood dreams and unfinished healing. We are the things we say out loud and the things we keep buried because we are still learning how to understand them ourselves.
How can one word possibly contain all of that?
Yet we continue to categorize one another. We see someone different from us and, almost instinctively, place them somewhere in our mental map of humanity. They are this. I am that.
We stop meeting people. We start meeting categories.
The irony is that the very identities that can make people feel seen can also become tools for separation when we use them to determine who deserves our understanding. We build communities around similarities, but sometimes forget that a healthy society cannot exist entirely within separate communities. If everyone retreats into their own corner of the world, who remains in the middle?
Who crosses the distance?
Who reaches across the space between us and says, โI may not understand everything about you, but I would still like to know youโ?
Because accepting people does not mean understanding every aspect of them. It does not mean sharing every belief or having identical experiences. It means being willing to recognize someoneโs humanity before deciding what category they belong to.
Perhaps we have become so obsessed with finding people who are like us that we have forgotten the importance of knowing people who are not.
A label can tell me something about you.
It cannot tell me everything about you.
We are people before we are anything else. Before the labels, before the categories, before the names we give ourselves and each other, there is a human being standing in front of usโcarrying a history we cannot see, fighting battles we may never know, holding a heart just as complicated as our own.
If we are all living within the identities and subcultures we have created for ourselves, how do we ever learn to live with one another?
The space between us will always exist. We will never have identical stories, identities, cultures, beliefs, or experiences. And perhaps that is where acceptance truly beginsโnot when our differences disappear, but when they stop standing between us.
๐จ: Sophia Lexine
