I feel a debt of gratitude to my fellow man. For their patience, perseverance, and kindness through the most harrowing of circumstances. We are all lost. Searching for the unknown in a life that we are all living for the first time. I am in awe of the worlds that we have created, the people we have become, and the mountains we have climbed.

We are all the same, monkeys from the same mother. Brother from another mother type shit. And yet we adapt and survive to vastly different worlds and environments. Powered by epigenetics and time.

When I see man. I see suffering. I see a legacy of war and triumph. Conflict and resolution. Periods of peace and periods of terror. An infinite wave, a continuum that persists beyond our lifetimes and high school trigonometry classes. We’re all in the infinite cycle of yin and yang. Good vs. evil. But nevertheless time marches on. Our cultures shaped by forces as trivial as biome and food scarcity. Our traits and deepest sins amplified by the evolutionary strategy of greed and survival.

I feel for the little guy. The underdog. The person born in the system with no power. No control. Who continues to smile and show love despite it all. I feel for the “oppressor” who is no doubt being oppressed themselves by a bigger fish in a larger, more cutthroat ocean.

We are all clueless monkeys born into this world full of rules we had no say in and worlds we did not create. We play games not of our own design winning prizes at the expense of others. But so is everyone else. that justifies it, right?

We all return to the dirt. That’s all we are. Dirt. In a million years, we’ll all just be dust, ashes, molecules of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus. Our creations will be gone, our buildings will have deteriorated. And all the money we’ve amassed will be nothing. Perhaps a new species will have taken hold of this beautiful earth. A species that maybe cares for its home a bit more than the one in charge now.

Maybe that was the plight of the dinosaurs too. Who fucking knows. They could have also been a technological dystopia. What’s special about us glorified monkeys who have only existed for half a million years.

There is so much pain in this world. It may seem that all of life is meant to weigh us down in an infinitely long trough of sorrow. But this is the cycle. This is the time when good people must rise against the powers that be, to give it their all, to make things even marginally better for the world around us. In a time where evil and moral corruption presides, we must look deep within ourselves and ask if the digital bits or pieces of paper are worth more than our soul, our morality. Is it worth poisoning the life force that runs within us. The one that consists of love, in its purest form. The sacrifices of our ancestors who toiled and suffered, just like us in hopes for a better future for the rest of us.

How will we honor their legacy? How will we forge our own?

I feel a debt of gratitude. To the ones that came before me. To the ones who diligently recorded their own lifetime of learnings, so that those who read it may have the slightest chance of doing something different this time around. I owe everything to the world around me, for its cruelty and kindness have made me the person I am today. I am awestruck by the power held in the present. In people. In peace.

There is no greater cause worth fighting for than the collective understanding and pursuit of peace. It is the cycle that must be fought for in every lifetime. Because though we may be specks of dust in a million years, there are infinite lifetimes of sorrow and injustice that can be transformed to those of peace.

It’s not hard to find examples to follow. Just pick a location and period, and you’ll find one: Jesus, the Buddha, Confucius, Martin Luther King. And countless others whose names have not survived to date. We must use all of our powers. And the latest technologies for good. For the good of the people. For the good of our earth. For the good of our mutual, shared existence.

Every day is a chance to repay our debt of gratitude. To honor those that came before us, the lessons they earned, and the future they fought for.