The estimated age of the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years, Earth is about 4.54 billion years old, and it’s believed that the human race has been around for approximately 200,000 years. It’s worth noting that during Earth’s 4.5 billion-year journey, there have been five catastrophic events that completely wiped out life on our planet. If we define modern humans by the discovery of writing, that goes back roughly 5,000 years. I share these numbers to illustrate just how small and insignificant a single individual’s lifetime is in the grand scheme of the universe. In this seemingly inconsequential span of time, human beings are, nevertheless, a unique anomaly or miracle in the universe, at least for now.
Individually, your life may seem devoid of meaning from the perspective of the universe, but you are still an extraordinary being with boundless potential. To make our lives meaningful, as a species, we must work together and leave a mark in the universe. If we look at where we’ve come in the last two thousand years:
As a human race, we have created a plethora of different concepts like race, nationality, state, religion, language, political ideology, sexual orientation, money, materialism, and many others. We have used these concepts to distinguish ourselves from others, to exclude them, and to dehumanize them. Today, a multitude of people who consider themselves superior to others continue to oppress, crush, and undermine the infinite potential that I mentioned.
Whether you believe in a religion or not, human beings are unique entities. Whether it’s rooted in creation or a scientific theory like evolution, it doesn’t change the fact of how special human existence is. All children are born innocent, all children need love, and I love each of them equally. As we grow up, we tarnish our minds with certain theories and lose our love, trust, curiosity, and empathy for each other. This is where we stand after 200,000 years. We act without knowing whether one of the children who dies or has their opportunities taken away might be the one to save humanity, whether they are the messiah you’ve been waiting for, or whether they’ll become a great artist. It’s time to put a stop to this. All humans are equal. All humans are valuable. All humans are unique and special. All humans deserve protection, safety, and equal opportunities in life. All humans deserve to be loved. Stop considering yourselves superior to others with foolish ideas. Look into each other’s eyes, look into sky; there are so many places to explore, so many places to go. The potential is limitless, but it only has meaning if you use it. Years ago, there was a beautiful story written for Civilization on a website called trgamer, and if I remember correctly, it had an impactful ending, something like, “A fragmented world is doomed to destruction.” The time for us to come together is here and now.