Iran's population has a median age of 27

I read that line today just before lunch. I'm 28 years old. I was thinking the other day as we were on a convoy to some place unimportant and I saw kids running down the street that most of them had never known a reality, a daily life, in which uniformed, armed Americans weren't rolling past their houses daily. The people of Iran who are my age have never known anything but theocracy--and yet, they're in the streets risking life and limb for freedoms that we would never think twice about.

If I take nothing else from deployment, it's the realization that one can never take his view of the world for granted. There is no such thing as "un-biased" as each of us can only view the world through the lens we've come to acquire through experience, time and life (suddenly I think of the words, "a wise Latina..." but that's a post for another time). But, more importantly, while I've somewhat always known that, the differences between how I view the world, an Iranian, an Iraqi or a Chinese is far vaster than I had ever realized.

The flip side to this is that, while Americans have far more that unites us than separates, the same idea applies similarly to our subsets. Someone who grows up in NYC or Augusta, GA or rural Pennsylvania is not going to see life similarly to me, from rural San Diego. But, I'm beginning to realize, I shouldn't expect them to, but only try to find the common ground upon which we can build.