What is to be Human?
An essay
That’s science, mechanical, technical, and clinical knowledge of the world. What makes us human is not just science.
Blood brings people together; blood causes wars, blood makes us cold, blood makes us feel at home, blood is why you are here, reading this essay. We all have blood in us flowing through our veins, given so graciously by our mothers and forefathers. Like a river with many tributaries and more to come. Humankind started and never stopped.
You existed as a cell in your grandmother’s womb before you were even born, your grandmother lived as a cell in your great-great-grandmother’s womb. In a way, life never ends, but a generation may. Humankind is strange; it is in constant need of control. Fairly, without a society, we will go into survival mode like in prehistoric times, Technically speaking, we are only here today as humans because we were as small as rats when the K-T extinction event happened, back when we were just a species of mammals, then very slowly evolution took place. Evolution changed everything. Homo habilis was one of the earliest members of the homo genus or human genus, from which society as it’s primitive started, communication was rudimentary, food habits were omnivorous, and they were scavengers. Men and women formed groups and lived together, with evidence of both monogamy and polygamy, though it’s hard to tell through fossils if intersex people existed, there’s evidence found of “ambiguous” genitalia for which scientists believe that it is highly likely that intersex people have existed throughout evolution.
Over time, mythology, specifically India and Mesopotamia where the first civilizations. On the banks of the Indus came the Indus Valley civilization, and what we know as the first religion Hinduism began at the river bank just like the blood in our veins. Hinduism was not meant to be blood passed on through generations upon generations. I am quite fond of the Indus Valley civilization; it was almost like a utopian society, with no class differences being found, which I think is due to the barter systems that were relevant during that time, and no specific signs of violence likely due to no hierarchy in society, though instantaneously the first civilizations on the other side of the world had signs of violence, with proper systems of hierarchy, which was in Mesopotamia despite these differences there have been seals found of trade between Mesopotamia and Indus, similarities like well city planning and polytheism and is also seen. Just like religion, the concept of race has been passed on like blood. The Human Genome Project (completed in 2003) found that all humans share 99.9% of the same DNA. The 0.1% variation exists, but it doesn’t align neatly with racial categoriesx. . Blood is thicker than water. Family ties are the strongest bond we can form. This saying is relevant such that humankind is family.
What came after the homo habilis were the social constructs that keep on shaping society like a river does to its banks. As in religion, race, sex, and gender identity. Primitive society had the requirement of humans as social beings, which has been the nature of humans throughout evolution. What is interesting is that our differences coexist with like-minded thinking throughout time, like the differences between water and blood.
“Water is a colorless, transparent, odorless liquid that forms the seas, lakes, rivers, and rain and is the basis of the fluids of living organisms.”
Keeping the half empty and half full question aside, Water cannot run through our veins; neither can blood be in oceans, making waves. This is due to their chemical differences, but both can cause life, whether if it’s the blood in a species or the species consuming water. Coexisting, for the same cause despite their differences, in peace.
Similarly, how humans coexist with death.
After ages of philosophy, we still are not able to find the true meaning of life what is it to be human?
Perhaps, to be human is to live in the tension between certainty and mystery. Science explains the mechanics, the blood that pulses through our veins, the water we drink, and the cells that divide. But science alone cannot explain why a mother weeps at her child’s birth, why we create art, or why we mourn the dead. The why lies beyond the how. It is the very marrow of what it means to be us.
We seek meaning because we bleed.
We seek love because we thirst.
One may argue that these are the just clinical things, and that once our heart stops nothing will matter, and we will end up in an infinite nothingness. Which certainly is a possibility.
Blood and water — one sustains the body, the other the earth. Together, they symbolize our dual nature: fragile and enduring, individual and collective. We are rivers of memory, of longing, of inheritance. Our ancestors walk with us, their blood still alive in ours.
Yet despite this, we build walls of race, of gender, of nation — forgetting that our veins run red in every land, that thirst touches every tongue. The constructs we cling to are as thin as paper; tear them, and beneath we find the same pulse, the same saltwater tears.
So what is it to be human?
It is to know that we are not alone. That no bloodline is pure, no story complete without another’s voice. To be human is to remember that we are all descendants of ancient rivers and wandering stars, all stitched from the same cosmic fabric, all temporary vessels of life flowing onward.
We will never fully answer the question — what is it to be human — because the answer changes with every birth, with every death, with every moment of grace or cruelty.
Perhaps that is the answer:
To be human is to keep questioning, as we find out and embrace what comes our way.
As long as blood moves through us, and as long as water fills the earth, we will search.
And in the searching, perhaps, we will find one another even if it is in death.
Not tryna be famous
just tryna feel less alone.
[@inkedinemotions] if u wanna read the mess that made me
