Race?

 Race has many meanings. From what I read the word is about biology but also about how  people define race but let's look just at the biological one. I was born into a race or a certain division of how humans categorize themselves. When I was born, I knew nothing other than the basic needs of newborns. But as I grew in all of the years it takes to do it, I absorbed from my surroundings, what I am today. I didn't accept all of the many influences of what I grew up in but selected those I felt were important to my way of thinking. Fortunately, my parents weren't the kinds of people who forced me to take on what they thought politically or religiously or socially,  but they did pass on certain attitudes and unintentional patterns of what "people" should be. I more or less absorbed that part of my nurturing without knowing what it was.  When I became an adult, I looked around and saw what I felt were injustices or fair justice and with a fairly broad education, nothing too directed or random, I collected and stored my own attitudes and mores and conditions about what life was and what would be for me. I credit a lot of what I came to be me, to reading and learning about other cultures and places their histories and literature and art. It is called education but education doesn't do it all and it has certain hidden prejudices within it that you must argue or defend. The best education is that which allows this freedom and accepts it. The journey of my life went here and there with travels to much of the world to get a glimpse of differences between places and people however brief, and it very much helped me along the way with experiences, that formed my opinions of what is good and what isn't, what works and what doesn't. I didn't think much about my genetic "race", because it just was. To me, it wasn't superior or inferior, it was what I was born into and I happened to love it. Some might not, but it's mine and I do love it alongside those of everyone else who loves theirs.  When I look back, I feel very happy that there was no judging in my social circle that included all kinds of races and colours of skin and religions and politics and histories, or rants about which one was better than another. I did meet some individuals who had opinions that while I didn't agree with, I felt was their personal opinion and belonged to them, not me. If I found their judgements offensive, I moved away from that sphere. Even today when "race" seems to hit every newspaper page in some way or another, I am happy that we all, are basically of the human race. Politically, I am Canadian and open to seeing human beings as one race but with different kinds of thinking. My personal thinking is that I will deal with someone else according to that individual and eschew all but that they are with me and we are one to one. What shade of skin they have, their language, their shape, their politics, their gender doesn't matter as much as simply, we being who we are in the moment. Do they enjoy life, do they care about other human beings and our earth with all of its generosities, are they kind and understanding and without meanness toward others and do we communicate those feelings to each other in our fellowship. My affection for other humans is based on nothing to do with politics or customs or origins or anything else but just being with that person and feeling a human bond.