I have a friend. Not a good friend particularly, more of an acquaintance. He’s a regular sort of a chap. Runs a computer business. Has a family. Normal, regular, 9 to 5, straight, nothing unusual about him. Or so he thought.

He is English, born and bred. He used to have a bit of a rant about immigration. Went on a bit about numbers but you always felt it was a bit deeper than that. He found out not long back that he was actually adopted. Nothing wrong with that – plenty are – but it set him to tracing his family. Yep, you’ve guessed it. His father was a foreigner.^* Now you wouldn’t know it to look at the man but he’s only half as English as he thought he was. Interesting.

If you trace back anyone’s history it’s going to throw up a lot of different bits from different communities and ethnic groupings. None of us is in any way ‘pure’. The whole thing has been melted, shaken and stirred and blended until any one of us would be hard-pressed to swear where we originated. Go back far enough and we all contain something a bit different. Apparently, half of all Europeans carry a line that can be traced back to Genghis Khan – and he came from Mongolia.

My point? Don’t judge others, because we are all human, all drawn from the same melting pot. We are all related if you go back far enough. There is no difference. We have to accept other communities, other cultures even if they are very different from ours because the difference between us is so very little when you wipe away the veneer we all wear.

Yes, we may wear different clothes and speak different languages and have different customs but we all fall in love, all want someone to hold and hug, to have a family, to be happy and successful, not to be afraid of the dark, to live a long time, die a good death, to be attractive and not to get fat, old or sick. What does it matter if we wear a suit, a sari or a grass skirt if deep down we all cry when we are hurt, laugh when we are joyful and our stomachs rumble when we are hungry? The veneer can be wiped away in a second and then we are all the same, all quite lovely and quite, quite human.