Parallel Paths

Lately, I’ve had a song taking up space in my brain rent-free. The kind that shows up repeatedly until you finally stop resisting and lean in. Last night, I chose to do just that. I pulled it up, pressed play, and let myself really listen. The song was Right Above It, and the line that wouldn’t let me go was this:

“We walk the same path, but we have different shoes, live in the same building, but we have different views.” — Drake

Driving home from school pick-up this morning, those words echoed louder than ever. And I couldn’t shake them because they felt like the truth. Most of us are walking the same path. We want our children to grow up safe, feel loved, and inherit a world where belonging is real, not conditional. The shoes are different, the views are different, but the dream is the same.

The ways we try to get there vary. Some lean into spirituality and hold onto faith as their compass. Beautiful. Others seek therapy, tools, and strategies to heal what came before and build what comes next. Beautiful. Some turn to community and connection, finding strength in circles of belonging. Beautiful. Some weave it all together into something uniquely their own. Also beautiful.

None of these paths cancel each other out. None is more right, more true, or more valuable. They are simply parallel.

And there’s something powerful in that idea of parallel practice. It doesn’t demand sameness. It doesn’t erase differences. Instead, it allows truth to sit side by side without competing. It allows us to keep walking in our shoes, seeing the world through our windows, and recognizing that we are headed in the same direction.

Parallel practice asks us to respect the shoes the other person is wearing, to notice that even when the view out of their window looks nothing like ours, we are still standing in the same building, and to accept that we don’t have to agree on the route to acknowledge that we’re moving toward the same horizon.

And isn’t that what the world needs more of? A reminder that difference does not have to divide us, that multiple approaches can be true simultaneously. Our children, and the children we hope to raise into thoughtful, compassionate adults, will benefit from seeing us walk side by side, even in different shoes.

If we zoom out, what becomes clear is not how different our shoes are but how aligned our destination is. A world where humans can pause before reacting. Where they can problem solve. Where they can think critically, communicate with compassion, and bring unity into spaces that feel fractured.

This morning, those lyrics reminded me of different shoes, different views, the same path, the same dream. And maybe that reminder helps us keep moving, side by side, parallel, forward.