We are family

And that is why it hurts so bad

There is hope in people, not in society, not in systems, but in you and me.
–Jiddu Krishnamurti

Every single person you know is family.
The people on other side of the restaurant, fence, or country,
They aren’t complete strangers, they are family.
We are family.

This is more than a metaphor,
We are literally cousins.
You and every “complete stranger” share a great-grandparent.
The only mystery is how many “greats.”

In 2004 mathematical modeling by a group of statisticians led by Douglas Rohde, then at MIT, indicated that our most recent common ancestor probably lived no earlier than 1400 BCE and possibly as recently 55 CE. […] Go back a bit further, and you reach a date when our family trees share not just one ancestor in common but every ancestor in common. At this date, called the genetic isopoint, the family trees of any two people on the Earth now, no matter how distantly related they seem, trace back to the same set of individuals.

–Scientific American

This won’t make Thanksgiving any easier…