Find Common Ground

Continuing our series of activities to help you get to know each other better, we’d like to add one that game-ifies the process of finding common ground. It’s called Commonalities.

The concept is pretty simple: sit down with a group of people – your family, maybe even your friends or co-workers, and create a list of things that all of you have in common. Of course, it’s easy to quickly assemble a list of surface-level commonalities – we all have hair, we all have skin, we all consume calories and convert them to energy, etc. And that’s why those things are not allowed! Dig deeper, especially if the group already has many obvious points of connection, and inquire into things like:

• Common experiences (we’ve all been lost at the mall!)

• Preferences (we all prefer alfredo to red sauce!)

• Pet peeves/phobias (we’re all afraid of birds!)

• Quirks (we all hum while we do the dishes!)

You might set a goal for the number of commonalities you need to find, or set a time limit and see how many commonalities your group can come up with in that time. If you have a large group assembled, you can even break into smaller groups and compete against each other to see, for example, which group can find 15 commonalities first, or which group can come up with more commonalities in five minutes. Another way to up the challenge level for group play: count only unique commonalities, so if more than one group comes up with the same one (we are all bilingual!), that one is wiped off the board and nobody can use it.

If you find the competition getting a little intense, good! Pushing yourselves to find more and more shared experiences and interests is a wonderful thing. We hope you’ll discover that the things you all have in common are far more numerous, and significant, than the things that separate you.

What are some commonalities that surprised your family? Share with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.