We're all the same - Nous sommes tous les mêmes

“Nous sommes tous les mêmes,” we are all the same. To a slender and malnourished job seeker in tattered rags, with untended hair and an overgrown beard, the opening statement is hard to believe. Especially as he stretches out his hand, asking, begging, his eyes pleading with those separated from his by a transparent compound made from Silica, Lime and Sodium Carbonate. Let us call him normal Petrus.

To a well-dressed and podgy career professional, comfortable in his automobile trying to ignore the pleading eyes of a ‘man on the side of the road’, it is hard to believe that they are equal. Let us call this one office Petrus. As normal Petrus approaches office Petrus’s car window, it is hard to believe that they are equal. The glass that divides them spells out that they are not the same, whether or not office Petrus gives normal Petrus the spare change in his coin box next to the gear lever is uncertain.

What is certain is that they cannot be the same. Office Petrus is considerably financially richer when compared to normal Petrus. Office Petrus lives in a plush apartment, while normal Petrus lives in a ramshackle dwelling made from corrugated iron, somewhere in the township between the claws of poverty and desperation. Office Petrus’s life expectancy should be longer than normal Petrus’s, if they both avoid the scourge of HIV. They surely cannot be the same?

If you take away the gulf in wealth, status and lifestyle, they are the same. If you consider the things that are important, then they are the same. Although office Petrus lives in a walled complex in the suburbs and street Petrus lives in a shack in the township, when death comes it will come for both of them, it won’t matter where either resides. Whether they die on the same day or decades apart, they are both human and they will both die, when all is stripped away, they are the same.

They might not be placed in the same type of coffins, but they will both be put in the ground. Office Petrus may have more people who will miss him, he might have more attendees at his funeral, but the tears shed for both are made of the same chemical components. Regardless of whose coffin cost more or whose tombstone will be prettier, they will both rot and be maggot food. Nature will take them both back and they will return to the soil from which they both came, when the end comes, they are both the same. In the grave, money and wealth do not matter.

We do not realize it because we’re are too busy tried to survive this life, but when it comes to the things that are most important in life, we are all the same. Before our creator, we are all the same.