It’s amazing where you can find life lessons. In a book, in a line at the grocery store, in a movie or in your email inbox. They can come from the most random places, but it’s not about how they found their way into your heart and mind, it’s about taking that lesson and living it.

Recently, one of those lessons arrived in my inbox. It made its way from across the world, via my mom. Some dear family friends of ours recently moved and we have been receiving email updates about adjusting to the life there on the compound. Differences in customs, food and overall way of life are a refreshing reminder that the world is sooooo large and our life is just a small part of it.

In one of the early emails, she described the way she noticed the same interactions between people. The same emotions. The same intentions.

Pain, joy, love, sadness, worry, peace,  the same the world over. All hearts experience the same things; we all want the same things for ourselves and our families. We make the barriers and assumptions.

It made me think of the beginning of Love Actually. How if you take a second, you can see love all around you. You can see the tenderness between a parent and child. The devotion between an elderly couple still holding hands. The mixture of fear, excitement and determination on the face of the new employee walking in on his first day.

We all feel pain, and we all have dreams. We all have our own hurdles to jump and victories to celebrate. So as we go into this week, let’s all just take heart in the fact that we are in good company – company spread across the world. And let’s remember that those we come in contact with may be going through a rough patch, and they may need just the smallest gesture of kindness. Drop the barriers, the assumptions, and focus on the joy, love and peace.