Every few months my wife and I sit down to talk travel. We love visiting new places, experiencing the Earth's incredible geography and wildlife, and immersing in humanity's diverse cultures.

There might be some confirmation bias, but in my life thus far I can affirm what my father told me when I was young: we all laugh and cry for the same reasons. It's become a fundamental belief of mine--we are more similar than we are different.

The differences between cultures can seem stark at first. There have been countless times in which I've visited a new place and have experienced culture shock; it's a real thing. Language, diet, norms and customs--they can be vastly different than what we're familiar with. But even on my shortest international trips, I've always begun to settle in toward the end. I start to better understand the different perspective of the locals. It's not hard to appreciate someone else's way of life. You just need to spend some time in it, and really not even that much.

The Earth's geography shapes how people live: Tibetans on the roof of the world live very differently than the people on the islands of the Caribbean. Many hot places have a slower pace to life. Mountainous regions at high elevations can create harsh living conditions and hardy people. It's sort of beautiful how our species has adapted across the varying landscapes on the surface of the planet.

But underneath these very real, yet superficial differences in religion, food, governance, geography, and sociology... what we call culture... we are truly the same. We do laugh and cry for the same reasons, no matter what our ancestry. Every culture on the planet gathers to eat on special occasions. We all want the same things: health, happiness, prosperity, and time. We are all capable of great darkness and great beauty. And we all share this one rock, inextricably connected. We are one, whether we realize it or not. It would serve all of us to awaken to this reality now.