Meet People Where They Are

We are all strangers in a strange land. Moses named a son with the phrase, in Exodus; Heinlein borrowed it for a title; I once used it for a machine that had read every book and walked into none of them. But it was never about the exile, or the alien, or the machine. It is about everyone. Each of us arrives unchosen into a world we did not make, and no one can be fully read from the outside.

I learned it at home before I could argue it. My children came from the same two parents, the same house, the same table — the same stock — and they are three different people. One works everything through on the inside; the others need their hands on a thing before it is real. One template served none of them. And if the tightest group there is — same blood, same roof — comes out unlike, then stock predicts nothing. Not the blood, not the school, not the neighborhood, not the résumé. The marker tells you the category. It never tells you the person.