My dad taught me something simple that has stayed with me my entire life. He used to say, “Everyone puts their pants on the same way, one leg at a time.” To some people, that may sound like just an old country saying, but to my father, it was a philosophy of life.
My dad was a self-made man, a Baptist preacher who could walk into almost any room, read it quickly, and before long become one of the leaders in it. He was not intimidated by wealthy people, educated people, famous people, or powerful people. At the same time, he did not think he was better than anyone else either. He simply believed we were all human beings trying to make our way through life.
He admired people with talent and intelligence, but he never worshipped them. Rock stars, presidents, respected theologians, philosophers, and businessmen were no different than the rest of us in his eyes. They still had fears, insecurities, failures, hopes, and weaknesses. They still had to wake up every morning and put their pants on one leg at a time. My father believed deeply in hard work and determination. He did not always meet his own expectations, but he believed a person could accomplish almost anything through perseverance, grit, and personal responsibility. That belief became instilled in his oldest son.
As I grew older, I carried that perspective with me. I have always believed no one was fundamentally better than me, nor that I was fundamentally better than anyone else. Some people had more education, more money, or more opportunity. Others had talents I envied or experiences I found fascinating. Yet over time, what struck me most was not how different people were, but how similar they were beneath the surface.
When I befriended people, they were often very different from me in age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, politics, or culture. Yet the older I became, the more convinced I became that human beings are far more alike than they are different. We all want to belong. We all fear rejection. We all struggle with shame, disappointment, uncertainty, loneliness, and loss. We all seek meaning, dignity, hope, and connection. As my dad would say, we all put our pants on the same way.
I saw this lesson even more clearly when I worked as a Child Protective Service investigator in Arizona while pursuing my goal of becoming a therapist. My mentor at the time was Terry Taylor. I investigated child abuse cases in two very different zip codes. One was a lower-income area in Glendale. The other was Paradise Valley, one of the wealthiest areas in Arizona. At first glance, the communities appeared worlds apart. Different homes, different schools, different lifestyles, different demographics, and vastly different resources.
But the longer I worked there, the more I noticed something important. The people themselves were not nearly as different as many assumed.
Parents in both communities struggled with addiction, stress, impulsive behavior, relationship conflict, depression, and poor decisions. The difference was often not morality or culture. The difference was resources and opportunity. Families in Paradise Valley often had grandparents nearby, babysitters, savings accounts, transportation, attorneys, stable employment, and strong social support systems. When problems emerged, they had options. Many families in Glendale did not.
A parent with money could leave children with a babysitter while partying. A parent without money might leave children unattended because there was simply no one else to call. One family’s mistakes stayed hidden behind resources, while another family’s struggles became visible to the state. The more I investigated these cases, the more convinced I became that human beings are not neatly divided into good people and bad people, or superior cultures and inferior ones. Most people were simply trying to survive life with whatever tools, support systems, and opportunities they had available to them.
That realization shaped me profoundly. It taught me to approach people with humility instead of superiority. It taught me to judge situations individually instead of through stereotypes or assumptions. Most importantly, it reminded me constantly of a phrase I had heard many times growing up: “But for the grace go I.” Under slightly different circumstances, many of us could have ended up living very different lives.
That perspective eventually became foundational in my counseling work. Over the years, I have worked with clients from many different racial, cultural, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds. I have worked with Native American clients in Arizona, Hispanic families, Black clients, white rural clients from Appalachia, LGBTQ clients, ministers, addicts, professors, laborers, and people who politically disagreed with almost everything I believed.
What surprised me over and over again was this: the deepest moments of connection rarely came from focusing on our differences. They came from recognizing our shared humanity.
A grieving father is still a grieving father. A lonely teenager still wants to feel understood. A client battling addiction still wants hope. A person struggling with shame still wants acceptance. The therapeutic relationship rarely begins with identity categories. It begins when another human being feels emotionally safe enough to believe they are seen, heard, respected, and understood.
I have often thought that if I had approached clients primarily through the lens of difference, many of those relationships would never have fully formed. If I believed our external identities made us fundamentally separate, then true alignment would have been difficult. Clients often come into counseling wondering whether the therapist can understand them. What breaks down that barrier is usually not matching demographics alone, but genuine empathy, humility, respect, and shared human experience.
In counseling, education, and life, I have come to believe that our common humanity is often far more powerful than the things that divide us. Differences matter, and cultures matter, but they are not the deepest thing about us. Beneath all the labels, politics, identities, and backgrounds, we are still human beings trying to survive suffering, find meaning, love others, and build a life worth living.
Maybe my dad understood that all along. After all, everyone still puts their pants on one leg at a time.
Dr. Wesley