Twelve days in I find myself in the student union of theOhio State University sipping coffee and scribbling in a notebook. Quitepossibly my favorite thing in life is sitting down alone with a cup of coffeeconfronting the day as it unfolds around me. For a second a glance up and watchthe people that surround me, and I realize I’m back at my usual coffee shop inUrbana, Illinois. In my mind, the students at Ohio State University appear justlike the students at the University of Illinois, and probably the University ofNorth Carolina, or Arizona, or Idaho, or any university across this country.My problem is simple: I’m a rotten generalizer.More often than necessary I put people into “boxes” based ontoo simple of patterns. The obvious problem with boxes is that they limitmovement, capability, and expectations. Boxes restrict how you view andunderstand people.A philosophical goal of mine not too long ago was tounderstand how people around the world were the same (the “universals “); toconsciously place humanity into a box. I thought if people proved to be moresimilar than thought world problems could be more easily eradicated.As it turns out, people are very rarely similar. Regardlessof how one chooses to identify or what situation one is born into, a life withevery experience is too unique to be placed in a box. What I think I’ve alwayssearched for is connection, but to see how people in the world are connected isnot to see how people in the world are similar. The real challenge is to seeconnection through the vast amounts of diversity.In the past twelve days I feel like I’ve gained real insightin how to perceive people when they disclose themselves. On day one of the rideI met Clinton, a survivor of cancer when he was just 36, who was now homeless.A few days later I met Eda, left as a child when her mother died of cancer, whowas born and raised in a rough neighborhood of inner city Philadelphia. Certainaspects of these two seemed salient enough to place them too quickly into a box,and if I had done that when I approached them I would have missed truly hearingthe stories of two people in this world.As a dire pessimistic at times, these last twelve days havehelped me understand how I had been limiting humanity as a whole. I except theworld to be a certain way, and it expect it to never change. But today, in theusual act of sitting down with a cup of coffee, I’ve gained respect for peopleas unique individuals with all sorts of experiences, and I’ve gained a littlehope for the world.