There are some values in life that you just take for granted, you never question, and you build your moral compass on top of it. You use it as a based to judge people and draw conclusions about life and people’s behaviour. With mostly everyone around you believing the same, you end up embracing these values to be the only truth out there with little to no chance to even think of otherwise possibility.

And then again, one day, and with a single line you read – a line that is formed of couple of few small words – you got hit with a clear fact that shatters your moral direction and send you in a twirl of thoughts trying to reassess your entire set of values, your perception of life, and your accepted code of behaviour.

That happened to me yesterday while reading “The Winner Stands Alone” book by Paulo Coelho. I was hit with a simple truth that left my mind occupied trying to process the implications of this truth and weighting its meanings and volume. Paulo has simply pointed out that “all men are equal” is a big lie that has been decided by a mad man and in which we all follow. In truth, all men are different.

For me, the line seems to carry a big deal of truth, but at the same time it challenges my core value of equality between human beings. Isn’t that what most of us are obsessed with at this stage of human evolution? Aren’t universal equal rights what we all aspire to and are vocal about? But then again comes the real question: How can you apply equal (same) laws on different entities? Is that even possible? and how fair that can be? I mean if you for instance apply a law of food portion onto two men, one who gets satisfied by an X amount of food while the other don’t and thus he breaks the law. We have the same law here, but it isn’t fair for the latter, is it?

Can we have then custom tailored laws for different people knowing that each individual of us is ineed different in a way or another? or does that mean that the notion of equality is overrated and the truth is that there is not – and won’t ever be – real equality in this unfair world? Will it matter when we embrace our indivdual differences and cater to our individual needs rather than what fits better to the majority of us?

Life is not fair, I have made peace with that fact long time ago, but have always also believed that we can try to make it more fair than it currently is. Today, I am reassessing my beliefs as it appears to me that while trying to inject more fairness in our lives by coming up with universal laws, we are hurting some others who are simply different and can’t abide with those laws.

Would the answer be in human compassion? It doesn’t sound like a good option to me with its current universal state, and while it has improved dramatically in the past decades as we evolved, it still needs time to come full in length to be able to stand alone and claim the answer for human equality. Untill then, the answer will remain: No, all men are not equal. We are all different.