Jean Gendreau

No one groomed this empty beach. It’s not soft and easy. Ahead, the ocean stretches to Africa. We’re on an island off the coast of Brazil in late June, mid-winter. It’s warm enough to swim. The wind smells of water and fruit. A pelican skims the waves. 
On a sandy point nearby stands a small stucco church from the 1600s. Our tour guide, a Brazilian, says the Portuguese built the church here so that Africans staggering off the slave ships could be quickly baptized, just before they were branded as slaves.
My feet feel the rippled, uneven sand as I walk into the waves. The beach slopes down. Big waves hit me. I stagger and almost fall. 
This is where I am today, in 2025, struggling to walk as waves hit me. The news overwhelms me, knocks me flat. I want to hate the other side because the cruelty hurts so many.
For thousands of years, everywhere in the world, the strong have enslaved the weak. Free labor makes great profit. Often white people enslaved brown. Lyndon Johnson said, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket.” 
It’s not only racism. White has enslaved white and brown has enslaved brown. Simply being “better than” has worked well to make abuse and slavery okay. In 19th century England and America, the Irish fleeing the famine were drawn in newspapers as ape-like, demonic beings. In India, “better than” took form as a caste system proclaiming that the divine order meant that the only “right work” for outcastes was cleaning urine and feces by hand.
After visiting the beach where people were branded, we take a bus into the jungle. The tour guide shows us a road to the sugar plantations. The road survives because enslaved workers shaped it by hand out of boulders as big as tables. Most lived about three months.
We visit a 3rd grade classroom in a tiny Brazilian town. Around the room are pictures of Brazil’s history. We see ancient tribal dwellings, the Portuguese empire’s arrival, the broken lives of the tribes, and slave boats from Africa landing near the church. We ask who the Portuguese elite are today. The guide shrugs. “We are all mixed here. There are no pure ones.” My heart lifts.
One more step into the ocean and there’s a drop off. There’s nothing left to stand on. “Better than” drowns us all. The lies we accept about history weigh us down like cement around our ankles. 
Even though three of my four grandparents trace their heritage to soldiers in the American Revolution, this heritage is in no way “better than.” My ancestors were mostly Puritans, severe people who did not celebrate Christmas and who were so steeped in judgment that they often informed their congregation about neighbors’ sinful acts. 
Justifying cruelty by claiming we are “better than” allows terrible things. These waves are false divisions that smash us all. I loathe the cruelty we’re seeing today. But what if I had heard and believed lies told as truth? What if I believed the only way to make myself tall was by standing on someone’s wounded body? What if I truly thought that the crueler I was, the stronger I was? “Better than” can be based on anything— lies about skin color, gender, money, sexuality, language, religion.
The great wise man Desmond Tutu, working with Nelson Mandela to build a new South Africa, said this: “There are times when I look at some of those described as ‘monsters’ and I honestly believe that there, but for the grace of God, go I. I recognize in each of them a depth of humanity that was a mirror of my own.” Tutu is not talking about immigrants who might take jobs. He is talking about genocide. He and Mandela were working with tribal gangs who had massacred others with machetes. 
Judgment builds every wall. Everyone wants to be dominant. No one wants to be the weak guy. 
Every spiritual tradition urges non-judgment, and so does psychology. Judgment is easily the biggest source of our collective human suffering. What we all have in common is that, like three-year-olds, we think the easiest way to push ourselves higher is to push someone lower. Simply acknowledging this in ourselves is a step forward. This commonality can turn into community if we can love ourselves despite it. I am not saying it’s okay to push others down. I am saying that the urge to be “better than” is ordinary. I can transcend this in myself by accepting my own humanity, allowing myself to see cruel people in this new light, and seeking a way ahead for us all.
I am not saying this cruelty has no consequences. And I certainly want to claim that I would never be cruel. And yet, I know good people who are sometimes cruel because of where they have come from. This is Tutu’s point: We all share vulnerability as humans. We all share just being human.
We think we are waves, separate from everyone else. We can easily point out the “other.” We love our separateness. We love our heritage stories. Every worthy ancestor was a great guy with a sweet little farm in the hills that the local indigenous tribes left vacant after happily abandoning their villages.
This is not religion. Even Tutu, who was an archbishop, doesn’t talk about God when he talks about hating others. He talks about simply being human. 
Standing in this water, each wave looks unique, and we want that specialness. I think I am one wave, and “they” are another. The concepts of “good and bad” and “better than” seem obvious. “Look at that one, smashing into the rocks.” We sink ourselves by making each wave individual and then judging it as good or bad. 
Our mistake is thinking we are separate waves. Instead, we are the ocean. All of us—living terrible experiences, hearing skillful lies—might turn cruel. Of course, I certainly want to claim that I could never do such things. But I might. I’m an old woman who goes to church every week. But if someone attacked my child, I would plan ways to hurt them.
Tutu says there is no “other.” There is only all of us, living out our shared humanity. When I stop blaming, I can kick the cement off my ankles. Maybe I can float.
There is an old image that meditation teachers love: The panicked wave looks around. “Where is the ocean?” The ocean itself smiles. “Here…here…here. We are the ocean. I am in you and you are in me.”
I stop staggering into the waves. When I am the ocean, I float.
I once visited Hiroshima. The Peace Park was built at ground zero, amid the skeletons of buildings. It was the anniversary of the bombing, and I dreaded going. But something called me. The museum was unbearable. But outside in the park, I walked slowly. 
Hundreds of long garlands of tiny bright paper cranes hung from statues’ arms and lay draped over plaques. The park staff changed them every day. Small hands, children’s hands had folded each crane. There were thousands, with notes for peace, mailed by children from every country on earth.
Further on, I came to a huge mound covered with long soft grass—a mound as big as a house. The silence felt easy and final. I read the plaque. These were the ashes of the victims. 
Every wave, all of us, we are the ocean. We are all mixed here. Hiroshima’s ashes bear witness. We are the ocean. We are one, and there is nothing else.