You Say Tomato

You say tomayto. I say tomaHto.

I don't know the origin of this phrase nor do I care to look it up.

But I was thinking about it in church this morning. No, it really didn't have anything to do with the sermon, but nevertheless this is what was on my mind.

In this world we seem to emphasize the differences. I don't want to get into politics, but it seems that parties seem to spend all their energy talking about how much better and different they are from the other side and we become more and more polarized.

This spreads to so many areas of life. I find myself guilty of this too. Sometimes I want to be contrary. And sometimes it's not a desire to be contrary, but a desire to stand up for something I care about and so I want to express it differently than someone else.

Because I didn't look up the origins I also don't know why people use the "tomato/tomahto" phrase. But when I hear it, it sounds to me like a "I'm right and you're wrong" sorta thing. Not a "Hey, that's cool that you say this differently!"

People want to be right. So if anyone says something differently or had a different opinion we want them to be wrong.

I want to get better at hearing tomato and rather than hearing the weird pronunciation of that middle "A", I want to say "Hey! It's cool that we both end with that "toe" sound. That's the same, and that's really cool!"

Too often I am jarred by the differences instead of seeing the sameness.

I'm not talking about tomatoes.