Significance

 If you are anything like me, you probably cannot stay indoors for a long time. I get very bored, hence I normally take walks in the evenings (usually motivated by the street-food where I live), ride my bike listening to music or go play some football. Sometimes when I am on these walks or rides I think about the lives surrounding me. See when I was a kid I used to see everybody else as filler characters to MY 'show'. As I grew I began to understand everybody was just like me, everybody had their own story so everybody had their own 'show' and when we met it was like one of those collaboration episodes on Nickelodeon or Disney. (my imagination goes ballistic, my bad). So back to what I was saying, everybody you come across has a life like you. It seems like something that should be common knowledge but you would be surprised how many people fail to acknowledge that. To them you are just another face they see on the street, a face without a story (an NPC to all my gamer friends). When you put all this into perspective you start  to wonder, you start to question your importance and your significance right? I know I do, sometimes I ask myself, if was to jump off the planet today and my whole existence was assessed, how much of an impact have I made. The earth has existed for 4.5 Billion years and humans have only been around for 5 million of those years. To put that into perspective, the earth is 900 times older than us. Dinosaurs lived on earth for 165 million years if  I'm not wrong, they were here way longer than us and today they have been reduced to fossils and pictures on the internet and text books, history. Back to humanity now, most people want to make an impact make their presence acknowledged and their absence felt. Nobody wants to be a face without a story to everybody, most of us want to be acknowledged and subsequently remembered. There is a story I came across on the internet of an 80 year old woman who did not know how to use the internet much and had no children. So she asked her neighbor to help her find all her old friends whom she had lost touch with. So they could not find their phone numbers and none of them had pages on social media. Her neighbor then started looking through all the obituaries and slowly the old woman discovered that most of her old buddies were dead. My heart bled. Imagine that, sitting back in your old age and having nobody at all. I do not know about you but to me existence would seem very futile. This story reinforced a notion I have been wanting to put out there for a while now. According to me one of our major duties as people is to each other. To be here for one another. Personally, I want to know everything there is to know about all the people who are closest to me. I want to experience everything I can with them because it's the easiest way to make this so called 'impact' on others and ourselves, to experience life one must experience and try to understand humanity. Do not be afraid to experience humanity. These days most people shield themselves from people with a front of 'villainy' and 'staying dangerous' not knowing that the person who will love you the most or the person who you will share the best moments of your life or somebody who will help you open so many gates in your life is just an introduction away from you. Believe me people can be horrid, there is also a dark side to humanity. But your paranoia and fear should be conquered because with them you will not get to see the beauty of humanity. Some of us have deep unhealed scars from either troubled childhoods, bad experiences with love or trauma caused by strangers or worse those closest to us. But maybe in the same way you will get to experience healing through a better side of humanity. It is a risk but isn't part of the beauty of life risking something and watching it pan out exactly or even better that you expected? Do not let misinformation and or paranoia ruin your human experience. Social media has made us believe it is impossible to find true friends nowadays or that everyone is out to get you and that marriage is a scam. Seeing people talk about these experiences on Twitter or Instagram closes your eyes to what is happening around you. Take for instance the number of us who come from healthy households, your parents taking care of you and wanting the best for you. Siblings who are irritating most times but when we imagine them in a casket or going away for good our hearts shatter, friends who were once strangers but now seem like such an integral part of our lives. We love and care for these people, we might not know how to show it but we do. These should be prime examples to us, how we can love the good the bad and the ugly of humanity. All I am ranting about is basically, be a better human to others man. Our significance is only to us and those closest to us because we are insignificant to everything else. Time and earth existed long before you did and will continue to do so long after you are gone. Great empires and people have come and gone throughout history, reduced to dust or ashes. You are only important for your stipulated time on this rock in space and to those who get to experience you, so get out there experience life fully while you are still here.