Steven LaChance Blog

Nothing Else Should Matter
— Steven A. LaChance

How did we learn to live like this,
in a world that leans so easily toward hate?

Where did it begin,
this quiet belief
that we are somehow better
than the person standing beside us,
to the right,
to the left,
close enough to touch
but kept at a distance
by nothing more than an idea.

What makes one life worth more?
Money?
Things stacked in a room,
numbers on a screen,
a name people recognize
but do not really know?

I have seen enough to understand
that wealth does not measure goodness.
Some of the cruelest hearts
have lived behind the largest doors.

And what of skin,
this surface we wear without asking?
How does one shade rise above another
when we are built from the same design,
the same breath moving through us,
the same fragile code
written into every cell?

Tell me how that makes sense.

And identity,
the way someone comes to know themselves,
to name what they feel inside,
to step into it honestly.

Why should that invite hate?

Clothing is only fabric.
Labels are only words.
A life is something deeper than both.

If my neighbor says,
this is who I am,
why would I answer that
with anger?

And borders,
lines drawn across a map,
held up as something real
when the earth beneath them
never agreed.

We move across it,
all of us,
as if we belong somewhere else
when in truth
we belong here
together.

When I look at you,
I do not see categories
or reasons to divide.

I see someone
living a life
as complicated and real as mine.

A member
of the same human family.

And in the end,
nothing else
should matter.