What it Means to be Human
I envision myself floating in a bed of water. It is just me and the waves and the sky… I’m small to the universe, yet in my mind, I carry the weight of the world. When I bring myself to this place, it is easy to understand what being a human means to me. I feel so much and sometimes these feelings are bigger than I am. It is important to remind myself that creatures roam this earth who see, smell, hear, taste, communicate, love, hate, feel. They live lives beyond comprehension and maybe in some cases beyond compare to that of a human. They are complex and thoughtful, and at the same time could be cruel and violent. These creatures, while different, are alike to humans in every way. When I say alike, I’m not referring to physical characteristics, I refer to any being’s soul. One of my favorite quotes is “difference is a matter of the mind’s thought”. Through observation and meditative thought, I’ve concluded that what makes me different from someone else or a different species is the way I choose to perceive myself and the world around me. Humanity is a group of outspoken creatures littered with different perceptions about everything that there is to exist. Being human is about appreciating your existence in a place so broad while also valuing and accepting what makes it both beautiful and ugly. In Smith’s, What does it Mean to be Human, Smith makes a point to address that being human is beyond the typical fossil record and scientific equation. It’s too complex to simplify and compress into one definition, one word. We as well as other species are more than a simple name and point on a timeline, and that is something to be embraced and emphasized.
Nature is Beautiful
It is said that Earth is the Goldilocks planet. This idea stems from the fact that our Sun is the perfect size to warm the Earth. Our atmosphere is composed of just the right amount of natural gases to support life throughout our world. Our waters are pure and drinkable, not naturally contaminated by waste. It’s as if our world was handpicked and made just for us. A world made for us to explore and wonder. Between the time of our birth to the time of our death, this beautiful world revolves around us. We see everything through our eyes, we touch with our hands, we learn and perceive life with our own minds. We are individuals. Individuals on a planet millions of times our size living in clusters, and experiencing the woes and joys of life together. We owe this planet everything. Not just for uniting billions of individuals, but for expanding our minds to think outside the box, and giving us the ability to coexist with the beauty that is nature. This idea of maintaining this beauty and reversing human harm is elegantly taught by Greta Thunberg in her speech about climate change. She speaks to the air quality in the world, the melting ice caps, the holes in the ozone, but above else she speaks to human harm and greed. As humans, we fixate on having everything available to us when we want it and how we want it with no thought to who or what is harmed in the process. We are ruining a world handcrafted to perfection to occupy and maintain billions of life forms and yet every day we wake up and take that for granted. It is vital that we take control of our actions and understand the consequences of our arrogance in order to save something that has been nothing but selfless.
4 Sources
1.) https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A655941931/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=2af73abf
2.) https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A650608168/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=a8692e21
3.) https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A654337789/AONE?u=cuny_ccny&sid=AONE&xid=6646bed7
4.) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5623880/
