Differences are but Delightful Flourishes

That sense of being different, which had long plagued me, disappeared when I saw the threads that run through us all. Sharing our stories, our feelings, it is the areas where we are the same that impress me. The differences are but delightful flourishes on the surface, like different-colored costumes, and I enjoy them. But the basic ways we are human, the basic ways we simply are, stand out to me now. I came to see that we all are really one, and I no longer feel alone.

c. 2001 AAWS, Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 347