Same Difference

My neighbor has a phrase she uses whenever I try to complicate something she considers settled. Whenever I offer another angle, introduce a distinction, or question what she calls “common knowledge,” she shrugs and says, “Same difference.”

Annoyingly, I might add.

I have come to think of her as a Commonist—not a communist, though the resemblance is not entirely accidental. A Commonist believes in the superiority of what “everybody knows.” The group verdict stands. Nuance is suspicious. Distinctions are indulgent. If something is widely repeated, it must be true enough.

Yesterday, after weeks of rain, the sun finally returned. We met at the fence between our gardens, talking about the unpredictable weather. She leaned over and offered a new phrase, though not a new thought.

“Life is like a box of chocolates,” she said knowingly.

But she didn’t know it was from Forrest Gump. Or that the original line goes, “Life was like a box of chocolates.” She certainly never considered that a Whitman’s Sampler or a gold-wrapped box of Godiva might not be the best simile for life, or even for weather unpredictability. A box of chocolates is not destiny; it is packaging. The pieces are arranged. The options are limited. The legend is printed. The uncertainty, if any, lies only in whether you look before you bite. And even then, the worst that can happen is a disappointing coconut cream.

Naively, I tried to explain.

Life, I suggested, is not curated variety. It contains bitterness not listed on any label. It contains absence. It contains rot. It contains surprises that are not confectionery.

She listened patiently. Then she shrugged.

“Same difference.”

That, I think, is the real metaphor.

Common knowledge, I am discovering, is often second-hand knowledge repeated with confidence. The origin disappears. The context dissolves. The phrase, often misquoted, survives. And once someone sees no difference in a difference, there is very little left to say.