The flu is batting me around like I'm a ball of yarn. Not a terrifically mean-spirited flu, but a persistent one.

I drink endless gallons of hot tea with honey and soups with rich broths. The black chai tea I'm drinking now is made by Yogi Teas; on the box there's a photo of someone posed in the Downward-Facing Dog asana. Each teabag is printed with helpful spiritual advice, calming meditative precepts. It may not actually help, but it sure is nice.

NyQuil is good, too. No meditative precepts there, just a laundry list of warnings and contraindications in tiny five-point Helvetica. NyQuil doesn't care what you think of it; it's bold and it's bilious green and it tastes like poison. But none of that matters. NyQuil knows you need it; and even if you don't, there's ten just like you who do.

I'll take both. I don't care.

At my new church, there's a woman who's thinking about joining--she'd be one of the "Young Adults" and thus in my purview. The hitch is that her fiance is a Buddhist. I can't wait to talk to this guy. We can get our Thich Nhat Hanh on. Is Buddha to Christ as Yogi Tea is to NyQuil? That seems like a false syllogism. NyQuil would never die for your sins. But still, there's something about Eastern and Western worldviews that never fails to inspire romantic throes of dualism. The West is this, the East is that.

So many differences, and yet for all that, we--you, me, Buddha, Christ, the man doing yoga on the tea box, and the inventor of NyQuil--still share something like ninety-five percent of our DNA with chimpanzees. From a biological perspective, our differences as humans from other humans are infinitesimal, a rounding error.

Take it a step further: two daughters with the same parents, the amount of shared DNA there is well over ninety-nine percent. Genetically, my two girls might as well be identical, might as well be clones. And yet spotting their differences is a no-brainer. Who are these people? How are we all so unique?

Don't think, just do this: click the comments link and write the first thing that comes into mind when I ask the question, "What makes you who you are?" Sign or don't sign--it's your choice. Don't think! Do! Now!