How far we have come. From hunting to gathering. From living in caves to building skyscrapers. From not being able to even cook our food to being able to control the temperature in every environment we spend our lives in. Humans should be proud. Humans should feel accomplished. Humans deserve a little more credit.

We are the guardians of our galaxy. We have the ability to resurrect entire species from the brink of extinction and even those have been completely vanquished. Some (most) of the stuff our minds have created is still perplexing to me. How did we possibly figure this out? I can dial a number on a device and have real-time conversation with anyone in any corner of this planet. I can use that same device to speak to them face to face. Amazing!

I am of the opinion that we are all made up of three parts. I would hope the majority of us are made up two parts good, one part evil. The spectrum of those goods and evils may vary from person to person of course, and that’s what sets us apart. I hear stories about men and women who are so outlandishly good, that I can’t imagine how they were able to constrain their evil so well. I hear about people so evil, that I can’t imagine they have any capacity for love. But surely they do. Surely they love and are loved. Someone, something, somewhere shares their love.

I have difficulty understanding how we have evolved so far as a species, have reached such great heights, and done this all with the burden of life in this world weighing down on us. Life is difficult, life is tragic, life can really hurt, yet somehow we persevere. We march forward. We are all here today thanks to an uninterrupted chain of reproduction. Ancestors who have struggled. Ancestors who have faced the trials and tribulations of their time, but still provided the world with a copy of themselves to usher in the next years.

I have felt the pain of the generations before me coursing through my veins, I have felt their anxiety, I have felt their fear. It keeps me going and keeps me strong. Somewhere out there in the heavens, a person who I have never met or could even trace myself back to, is smiling and proud. They are delighted with what they’ve created and the thousands (if not millions) of others in this world who have been branched from the same trunk. I (we) owe it to them to continue marching on.

If all goes well, and I surely hope it does, I will inevitably be able to continue pouring out my thoughts and feelings. Some will come from my parts which are good, some will inevitably come from my part that is evil. My hope is that when these are read, that people understand that we are just one species. We are of the same cloth. We have differing opinions and thoughts of course, but who is to say where these thoughts even come from? What is the source of our ideas?

I feel like some come from my brain, I feel like some come from my heart, but what has placed those there? They just seem to magically appear. We are only humans, after all. Much like a deer, a rabbit, a bear, or a fox. We are made up of similar chemistry but somehow ours is the one that has reached these heights. We have also reached such lows. Organized wars? How is that even a thing anymore?

Like many people in today’s world, I fear that humans are working towards evolving themselves out of existence. My hope is that we take a step back and examine the righteousness of our paths, and work toward refocusing that path on the parts that are good. Evil is growing and only our collective can reduce it. Constrain it. We are humans. We have created life. We have built it to a point of reasonable comfort. There is absolutely nothing that we cannot do. How far we have come, how far we still have yet to go.