I once had a journalism professor who absolutely hated whenever a writer used a phrase like "We all can think of a time when..." or "We all know someone who...". In his mind, trying to be universal by using extremely open-ended language like this made the story instead unrelatable to everyone. By speaking to everyone, you're really speaking to no one. People can relate better to one person's story told well than the low-fat version of everyone's story combined.
The older I get, the more true I realize this is. Humans are self-centered enough creatures that we relate everything back to our own lives anyways. I don't need to be told that I too can surely think of a time I lost a good friend; just tell me about how hard it was for you to lose yours, and I can bridge the gap myself. The best way to make something relatable is to tell it in its pure, untainted form, without overly angling it to a generic audience. Great art is universal because it touches us all, not because it tells us it's universal.
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