It took me approximately 6,395 days of living to actually understand the over spoken principle of not judging a book by its cover. I was raised to avoid homeless people, not because they don't deserve help, but for the sake of my own safety. I've always heard stories about homeless people committing outrageous acts, and never about the genuine kindness of many.

I was seventeen years old, filling my car with gas, and as vulnerable as can be. While at the gas pump, I turned my head and saw an older homeless man approaching me. As he struggled and limped towards me, I endured a mental panic attack. Nervous was an understatement. I began painting mental pictures of being attacked the second he'd get too close. Initially, I thought of starting the car and quickly driving away, but then thought I should at least be honest and tell him I spent all of my money on gas. To my surprise, the homeless man didn't even ask me for money. He approached me with a genuinely curved smile, asked how my day was going, and reached out for a handshake.

At that moment I was enlightened. I realized that he was not solely a homeless person, but instead he was someone's friend, son, maybe even someone's husband or father. I returned his greeting, and shook his hand. We continued to talk, and after making an effort to read my school name from my uniform, he asked me how I was doing in school and ensured that I applied myself to all of life's aspects. Although our conversation was less than five minutes long, it left an indelible mark on my soul and taught me the true danger of the single story. It wasn't until then that I noticed how much more there is to a person than their title, stereotype, and reputation. The stereotypes I once had on the homeless built walls where bridges should be, and only fed to my ignorant fear.

In that moment, I was so frightened that I forgot the most important fact he is human too. I failed to comprehend that the only thing different than he and I was our appearance, culture, and maybe personality. When stripped down to the raw truth of it all, we are both human. Although his life is black, mine is white, and there isn't much grey, we both know what it's like to experience the best days of our lives as well as "one of those days."

With that being said, the only reason I really was afraid was because he was different. I had never befriended a homeless person before, and was just scared of the unknown and the "what if."

Through this, I realized that the human race will never truly grow until we learn to feed off of each other's differences. There are too many wonderful components of the earth and humanity to solely be living in a bubble free from any cultural differences. Variations are what spark the development of many and encourage human beings to test our limits. Our differences as humans are to be used to experiment with for the sake of gaining a better understanding of who we are and who we are called to be, not to alienate one another.

The color spectrum of human pigment and social differences composes one ginormous palette, and it is time that we learn to be the artist, and create wonderful blends of colors, despite whether they match or not. Why not mix yellow and black, or the upper and lower class, or conservatives and liberals? Wouldn't it be so ideal if our world learned to love variety in our race as much as we loved variety packs of chips? Step of your comfort zone, love all, and be open to life.