What would you say to someone who was like you?
  All over the world, people are looking for things. Some people look for
basic necessities of life, such as food, or for similarly practical things
like paid employment. But one thing that almost everyone seems to look for on
some level, even subconsciously, is people who they can relate to. People
like to communicate with other people who they can share common ground with.
They can talk to each other and feel solidarity because they agree on things.
  In many ways, I'm a fairly unusual person. It's often difficult to find
people who think the same way as I do about many things. To some extent, this
makes it difficult for me to relate to people. Of course, you can take almost
any two people in the world and find at least a few things that they have in
common, but the most important things that make up my personality seem to not
be mirrored too often in other people. Like most people, I try to keep an eye
out for people who might be like me, but if you're decidedly unusual, it's
good to maintain a healthy skepticism about actually finding someone like
you.
  I've come to realize, however, that perhaps this isn't necessarily a bad
thing. What if you were to meet someone who agreed with you on everything?
There would be no need for any discussion. You would have conversations like
this:
  "I think (insert opinion here)."
  "I know. I feel the same way."
  "Great."
  One really couldn't learn much from someone who's exactly the same. There
would be no new ideas to exchange, because each person would have the same
thoughts as the other already.
  Obviously, this is a somewhat hypothetical, theoretical scenario, since no
two people in the world are exactly alike. Even among people who are very
similar, it's easy enough to find minor, amusing things to talk about if all
you want to do is "make small talk". But what if you want to make serious
conversation? What if the person is someone who you speak to on a regular
basis, and you don't want to chat about trivial things, but rather create
some enlightening dialogue? You couldn't do it for very long with someone who
thought the same way you do. You could bring up an interesting subject and
chat about it for a while, but in the end, all you would really have learned
was that someone else has the same opinion.
  What would you say to such a person? Would there be any point in talking to
them extensively?
  On the other hand, it probably would not be very pleasant to talk to
someone who has wildly different views from yours, either. There would be
nothing you could agree upon; you could probably extract some interesting
viewpoints from such a person, and maybe get some insight into how they
think, but in the end, even if they were friendly, it would be difficult to
be close friends with them, because there would be nothing to connect you.
Once again, this is mostly a made-up situation since any two people in the
world have some points in common, but there are certainly pairs of people who
cannot find enough harmony between each other to maintain friendships, or, in
some cases, even civility.
  This creates a basic question: How similar should people be? Is it enough
to have a few tiny fragments of common ground to connect on? Should people be
mostly similar so that they can synergize with each other, or should they be
mostly different so that they can create contrasts? Should ideal friends be
50% similar and 50% different? Or should the balance lean more in one
direction than the other?
  There seems to be no clear answer to this question. And, once again, even
if one could somehow arrive at the ideal ratio of similarity versus
dissimilarity between people, this would only be a hypothetical number, and
not much more, since even with that number in mind, you could not actually
set out to create two people with exactly that ratio of similarity.
  In the light of this sentiment, then, let us not see differences as
barriers between people, but rather, an opportunity to learn more about
people. Unity, where it can exist, can be a good thing, but as is often
observed, the world would be a terribly uninteresting place if everyone were
the same. When looking for people and talking to people, let us seek not only
to find the points on which we can agree, but also the points on which we do
not agree, so that we might gain further understanding as to exactly why that
disagreement exists, and by extension, come to a fuller appreciation for the
people who inhabit the world.