On Humans - Tumblr Posts

Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Edward Sackville-West c. September 1926

i don’t pretend to know the exact contours of your life. but i know the shape of pain, of loss. i know the feeling of staring your past in its eyes and being crushed under its icy gaze, under the weight of all of the decisions you haven’t made and the consequences of the ones you have. i know the gut wrenching feeling of putting your faith in the world and being let down once again. these feelings are as universal as music and art and sharing bread with the ones you love. maybe the great challenge of being human is finally understanding that we are not alone in this.

Dogfish, by Mary Oliver

humans are animals. on a biological level, human beings are highly evolved mammals with complex social structures and well-developed brains. we eat, we sleep, we fuck. we raise our young and form tribes and fight for scarce goods. but i think that we are interesting because we are unparalleled in our ability to cause immense ripples in the universe, to leave a mark in our worlds and the worlds’ of others. we have the ability to cause outstanding pain, to tear each other apart with our words and rip out each other’s hearts. we are animals at our cores. but i think this fact makes our small kindnesses that much more meaningful, our moments of relief and pointless morals and ardent generosity all the more special. i have seen incredible hurt in this world, and i have also seen such genuine curiosity, gentleness, and connection. maybe it’s naive of me, but i think that most people do not want to cause harm. if given the chance, most people will choose kindness — to say thank you to the waiter, to pull their legs in when you walk through an aisle, to follow traffic lights and form lines even when it would be easier to cut. i think at our core, we want to do good, to try. i think that all of the pain and anger and hurt and violence only makes our amazing capacity for kindness that much more meaningful, that much more wonderful. in a senseless, brutal world, the fact that someone is helping a stranger pick up their spilled groceries or making silly faces for a baby is something to be cherished. something real. maybe, just maybe, it isn’t all bad.