There are many things that connect us to other people.  We can have commonalities far beyond those than just related family members.  We bond to others that have similar interests to ourselves.  We connect to others as fans of the same sports teams and the loyalty of fans can be as strong as anything else.  There are those that bond as alumni of the same high school, college or university.  Some of our best remembered moments occur when we are younger, so there is always a soft spot in us when we speak about the school years where we met some of our closest friends.   Others are linked to each other based upon their faith and where they practice religion among their faith families.  There are a number of additional examples, however, the binding ingredient to all of these formulas is how we are very much connected to one another.  As a connected family member of the human race, we can bring the best out in ourselves and each other.  At times the world loses focus and we find that some people connect to others for the wrong reasons.  Let us not forget that at the end of each living day, we have more reason to celebrate our differences together and the fact that our connection to each other is a lot less complicated than we think.  In the simplest of terms, we owe each other mutual respect and we begin by being living examples to one another.  When our children are grown and our grandchildren begin to ask questions about why they may look different from someone else, we should all be able to happily acknowledge that although we look a little different from each other, we are all the same people.